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MAURICE GUEST 


BY 

HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON 


W 




NEW YORK 

PAUL R. REYNOLDS 

1908 



MAURICE GUEST 



BY 

HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON, 


, l^efiardson, 'He^ri ttTa 




NEW YORK 

PAUL R. REYNOLDS 








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COPY A. * 


Copyright, 1908, by 

WILLIAM HEINEMANN 


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TO LOUISE 







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4 













X 





PART I 

S’amor non e, che dunque e quel ch’io sento? 
Ma s’egli e amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale? 

Petrarch. 


i 


I 




\ 





I 


O NE noon in 189 — , a young man stood in front of the 
new Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and watched the neat, 
grass-laid square, until then white and silent in the 
sunshine, grow dark with many figures. 

The public rehearsal of the weekly concert was just over, 
and, from the half light of the warm-coloured hall, which for 
more than two hours had held them secluded, some hundreds 
of people hastened, with renewed anticipation, towards sun- 
light and street sounds. There was a medley of tongues, for 
many nationalities were represented in the crowd that surged 
through the ground-floor and out of the glass doors, and much 
noisy ado, for the majority was made up of young people, at an 
age that enjoys the sound of its own voice. In black, diverg- 
ing lines they poured through the heavy swinging doors, 
which flapped ceaselessly to and fro, never quite closing, always 
opening afresh, and on descending the shallow steps, they told 
off into groups, where all talked at once, with lively gesticula- 
tion. A few faces had the strained look that indicates the con- 
scientious listener; but most of these young musicians were 
under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, which 
manifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth. 

They hummed like bees before a hive. Maurice Guest, who 
had come out among the first, lingered to watch a scene that 
was new to him, of which he was as yet an onlooker only. 
Here and there came a member of the orchestra; with violin- 
case or black-swathed wind-instrument in hand, he deftly 
threaded his way through the throng, bestowing, as he went, a 
hasty nod of greeting upon a colleague, a sweep of the hat on 
an obsequious pupil. The crowd began to disperse and to over- 
flow in the surrounding streets. Some of the stragglers loitered 
to swell the group that was forming round the back entrance 
to the building; here the lank-haired Belgian violinist would 
appear, the wonders of whose technique had sent thrills of en- 
thusiasm through his hearers, and whose close proximity would 
presently affect them in precisely the same way. Others again 


4 


MAURICE GUEST 


made off, not for the town, with its prosaic suggestion of work 
and confinement, but for the freedom of the woods that lay 
beyond. 

Maurice Guest followed them. 

It was a blowy day in early spring. Round white masses of 
cloud moved lightly across a deep blue sky, and the trees, still 
thin and naked, bent their heads and shook their branches, as 
if to elude the gambols of a boisterous playfellow. The sun 
shone vividly, with restored power, and though the clouds some- 
times passed over his very face, the shadows only lasted for 
a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighter than 
the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustily 
swept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender 
beauties of a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delight- 
ful freshness in the air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights 
and serene white snow — the untrodden snow of deserted, moon- 
lit streets — that quickened the blood, and sent a craving for 
movement through the veins. The people who trod the broad, 
clean roads and the paths of the wood walked with a spring 
in their steps ; voices were light and high, and each breath that 
was drawn increased the sense of buoyancy, of undiluted satis- 
faction. With these bursts of golden sunshine, so other than the 
pallid gleamings of the winter, came a fresh impulse to life; 
and the most insensible was dimly conscious how much had to 
be made up for, how much lived into such a day. 

Maurice Guest walked among the mossgreen tree-trunks, 
each of which vied with the other in the brilliancy of its coating. 
He was under the sway of a twofold intoxication: great music 
and a day rich in promise. From the flood of melody that had 
broken over him, the frenzied storms of applause, he had come 
out, not into a lamplit darkness that would have crushed his 
elation back upon him and hemmed it in, but into the spacious 
lightness of a fair blue day, where all that he felt could expand, 
as a flower does in the sun. 

His walk brought him to a broad stream, which flashed 
through the wood like a line of light. He paused on a suspen- 
sion bridge, and leaning over the railing, gazed up the river 
into the distance, at the horizon and its trees, delicate and 
feathery in their nakedness against the sky. Swollen with 
recent rains and snows, the water came hurrying towards him — 
the storm-bed of the little river, which, meandering in from 
the country, through pleasant woods, in ever narrowing curves, 
ran through the town as a small stream, to be swelled again 


MAURICE GUEST 


5 


on the outskirts by the waters of two other rivers, which joined 
it at right angles. The bridge trembled at first, when other 
people crossed it, on their way to the woods that lay on the 
further side, but soon the last stragglers vanished, and he was 
alone. 

As he looked about, eager to discover beauty in the strip 
of landscape that stretched before him — the line of water, its 
banks of leafless trees — he was instinctively filled with a desire 
for something grander, for a feature in the scene that would 
answer to his mood. There, where the water appeared to end 
in a clump of trees, there, should be mountains, a gently un- 
dulating line, blue with the unapproachable blue of distance, 
and high enough to form a background to the view; in sum- 
mer, heavy with haze, melting into the sky; in winter, lined 
and edged with snow. From this, his thoughts sprang back to 
the music he had heard that morning. All the vague yet eager 
hopes that had run riot in his brain, for months past, seemed to 
have been summed up and made clear to him, in one supreme 
phrase of it, a great phrase in C major, in the concluding 
movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. First sounded by 
the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by the 
strings, in magnificient unison, and had mounted up and on, 
to the jubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a 
courageous sincerity in this theme, such undauntable resolve; 
it expressed more plainly than words what he intended his life 
of the next few years to be; for he was full to the brim of 
ambitious intentions, which he had never yet had a chance of 
putting into practice. He felt so ready for work, so fresh and 
unworn ; the fervour of a deep enthusiasm was rampant in him. 
What a single-minded devotion to art, he promised himself his 
should be! No other fancy or interest should share his heart 
with it, he vowed that to himself this day, when he stood for 
the first time on historic ground, where the famous musicians 
of the past had found inspiration for their immortal works. 
And his thoughts spread their wings and circled above his head ; 
he saw himself already of these masters’ craft, their art his, he 
wrenching ever new secrets from them, penetrating the recesses 
of their genius, becoming one of themselves. In a vision as 
vivid as those that cross the brain in a sleepless night, he saw a 
dark, compact multitude wait, with breath suspended, to catch 
the notes that fell like raindrops from his fingers; saw himself 
the all-conspicuous figure, as, with masterful gestures, he com- 
pelled the soul that lay dormant in brass and strings, to give 


6 


MAURICE GUEST 


voice to, to interpret to the many, his subtlest emotions. And he 
was overcome by a tremulous compassion with himself at the 
idea of wielding such power over an unknown multitude, at the 
latent nobility of mind and aim this power implied. 

Even when swinging back to the town, he had not shaken 
himself free of dreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay 
upon the streets, and there were few discordant sounds, few 
passers-by, to break the chain of his thought. He had move- 
ment, silence, space. And as is usual with active-brained 
dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real life about him ; he 
was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, of thriving 
content, which marked the great commercial centre, and he let 
pass, unnoticed, the unfamiliar details of a foreign street, the 
trifling yet significant incidents of foreign life. Such im- 
pressions as he received, bore the stamp of his own mood. He 
was sensible, for instance, in face of the picturesque houses that 
clustered together in the centre of the town, of the spiritual 
Gemutlichkeit , the absence of any pomp or pride in their 
romantic past, which characterises the old buildings of a Ger- 
man town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into 
the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs 
and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch 
with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about 
them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that 
ran at all angles off the Market Place, one side of which was 
formed by the gabled Rathaus , with its ground-floor row of 
busy little shops; and, in fancy, he peopled these streets with 
the renowned figures that had once walked them. He looked 
up at the dark old houses in which great musicians had lived, 
died and been born, and he saw faces that he recognised lean 
out of the projecting windows, to watch the life and bustle 
below, to catch the last sunbeam that filtered in; he saw them 
take their daily walk along these very streets, in the anti- 
quated garments of their time. They passed him by, shade- 
like and misanthropic, and seemed to steal down the opposite 
side, to avoid his too pertinent gaze. Bluff, preoccupied, his 
keen eyes lowered, the burly Cantor passed, as he had once 
done day after day, with the disciplined regularity of high 
genius, of the honest citizen, to his appointed work in the 
shadows of the organ-loft; behind him, one who had pointed 
to the giant with a new burst of ardour, the genial little im- 
proviser, whose triumphs had been those of this town, whose 
fascinating gifts and still more fascinating personality, had 


MAURICE GUEST 


7 


made him the lion of his age. And it was only another step 
in this train of half-conscious thought, that, before a large- 
lettered poster, which stood out black and white against the 
reds and yellows of the circular advertisement-column, and 
bore the word “ Siegfried,” Maurice Guest should not merely be 
filled with the anticipation of a world of beauty still unex- 
plored, but that the world should stand to him for a symbol, as 
it were, of the easeful and luxurious side of a life dedicated to 
art — of a world-wide fame; the society of princes, kings; the 
gloss of velvet; the dull glow of gold. — And again, tapering 
vistas opened up, through which he could peer into the future, 
happy in the knowledge that he stood firm in a present which 
made all things possible to a holy zeal, to an unhesitating 
grasp. 

But it was growing late, and he slowly retraced his steps. 
In the restaurant into which he turned for dinner, he was the 
only customer. The principal business of the day was at an 
end ; two waiters sat dozing in corners, and a man behind the 
counter, who was washing metal-topped beer-glasses, had almost 
the whole pile polished bright before him. Maurice Guest sat 
down at a table by the window; and, when he had finished his 
dinner and lighted a cigarette, he watched the passers-by, who 
crossed the pane of glass like the figures in a moving photograph 

Suddenly the door opened with an energetic click, and a lady 
came in, enveloped in an old-fashioned, circular cloak, and 
carrying on one arm a pile of paper-covered music. This, she 
laid on the table next that at which the young man was sitting, 
then took off her hat. When she had also hung up the unbe- 
coming cloak, he saw that she was young and slight. For the 
rest, she seemed to bring with her, into the warm, tranquil 
atmosphere of the place, heavy with midday musings, a breath 
of wind and outdoor freshness — a suggestion that was height- 
ened by the quick decisiveness of her movements: the briskness 
with which she divested herself of her wrappings, the quick 
smooth of the hair on either side, the business-like way in 
which she drew up her chair to the table and unfolded her 
napkin. 

She seemed to be no stranger there, for, on her entrance, the 
younger and more active waiter had at once sprung up with 
officious haste, and almost before she was ready, the little table 
was newly spread and set, and the dinner of the day before 
her. She spoke to the man in a friendly way as she took her 
seat, and he replied with a pleased and smiling respect. 


8 


MAURICE GUEST 


Then she began to eat, deliberately, and with an over- 
emphasised nicety. As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, 
Maurice Guest felt that she was observing him; and through- 
out the meal, of which she ate but little, he was aware of a 
peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. It ended by discon- 
certing him. Beckoning the waiter, he went through the busi- 
ness of paying his bill, and this done, was about to push back 
his chair and rise to his feet, when the man, in gathering up 
the money, addressed what seemed to be a question to him. 
Fearful lest he had made a mistake in the strange coinage, 
Maurice looked up apprehensively. The waiter repeated his 
words, but the slight nervousness that gained on the young man 
made him incapable of separating the syllables, which were in- 
distinguishably blurred. He coloured, stuttered, and felt 
mortally uncomfortable, as, for the third time, the waiter re- 
peated his remark, with the utmost slowness. 

At this point, the girl at the adjacent table put down her 
knife and fork, and leaned slightly forward. 

“ Excuse me,” she said, and smiled. “ The waiter only said 
he thought you must be a stranger here: der Herr ist gewiss 
fremd in Leipzig ? " Her rather prominent teeth were visible 
as she spoke. 

Maurice, who understood instantly her pronunciation of the 
words, was not set any more at his ease by her explanation. 
“ Thanks very much,” he said, still redder than usual. “ I . . . 
er . . . thought the fellow was saying something about the 
money.” 

“ And the Saxon dialect is barbarous, isn’t it ? ” she added 
kindly. “ But perhaps you have not had much experience of it 
yet.” 

“ No. I only arrived this morning.” 

At this, she opened her eyes wide. “ Why, you are a 
courageous person ! ” she said and laughed, but did not explain 
what she meant, and he did not like to ask her. 

A cup of coffee was set on the table before her; she held a 
lump of sugar in her spoon, and watched it grow brown and 
dissolve. “Are you going to make a long stay? ” she asked, 
to help him over his embarrassment. 

“Two years, I hope,” said the young man. 

“Music?” she queried further, and, as he replied affirma- 
tively: “Then the Con. of course?” — an enigmatic question 
that needed to be explained. “You’re piano, are yoru not?” 
she w r ent on. “I thought so. It is hardly possible to mistake 


MAURICE GUEST 


9 


the hands ” — here she just glanced at her own, which, large, 
white, and well formed, were lying on the table. “ With 
strings, you know, the right hand is as a rule shockingly 
defective.” 

He found the high clearness of her voice very agreeable after 
the deep roundnesses of German, and could have gone on 
listening to it. But she was brushing the crumbs from her 
skirt, preparatory to rising. 

“Are you an old resident here?” he queried in the hope of 
detaining her. 

“Yes, quite. I’m at the end of my second year; and don’t 
know whether to be glad or sorry,” she answered. “ Time goes 
like a flash. — Now, look here, as one who knows the ways of 
the place, would you let me give you a piece of advice? Yes? 
— It’s this. You intend to enter the Conservatorium, you 
say. Well, be sure you get under a good man — that’s half the 
battle. Try and play privately to either Schwarz or Bendel. 
If you go in for the public examination with all the rest, the 
people in the Bureau will put you to anyone they like, and that 
is disastrous. Choose your own master, and beard him in his 
den beforehand.” 

“Yes . . . and you recommend? May I ask whom you are 
with?” he said eagerly. 

“ Schwarz is my master; and I couldn’t wish for a better. 
But Bendel is good, too, in his way, and is much sought after 
by the Americans — you’re not American, are you? No. — Well, 
the English colony runs the American close nowadays. We’re 
a regular army. If you don’t want to, you need hardly mix 
with foreigners as long as you’re here. We have our clubs and 
balls and other social functions — and our geniuses — and our 
masters who speak English like natives . . . But there! — 
you’ll soon know all about it yourself.” 

She nodded pleasantly and rose. 

“ I must be off,” she said. “ To-day every minute is precious. 
That wretched Probe spoils the morning, and directly it is 
over, I have to rush to an organ-lesson — that’s why I’m here. 
For I can’t expect a Pension to keep dinner hot for me till 
nearly three o’clock — can I? Morning rehearsals are a mis- 
take. What? — you were there, too? Really? — after a night 
in the train? Well, you didn’t get much, did you, for your 
energy? A dull aria, an overture that ‘ belongs in the theatre,’ 
as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that one has 
heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a 


10 MAURICE GUEST 

fresh dish this season. Nothing but yesterday’s remains heated 
up again.” 

She laughed as she spoke, and Maurice Guest laughed, too, 
not being able at the moment to think of anything to say. 

Getting the better of the waiter, who stood by, napkin on 
arm, smiling and officious, he helped her into the unbecoming 
cloak; then took up the parcel of music and opened the door. 
In his manner of doing this, there may have been a touch 
of over-readiness, for no sooner was she outside, than she 
quietly took the music from him, and, without even offering him 
her hand, said a friendly but curt good-bye: almost before he 
had time to return it, he saw her hurrying up the street, as 
though she had never vouchsafed him word or thought. The 
abruptness of the dismissal left him breathless; in his imagina- 
tion, they had walked at least a strip of the street together. 
He stepped off the pavement into the road, that he might keep 
her longer in sight, and for some time he saw her head, in the 
close-fitting hat, bobbing along above the heads of other people. 

On turning again, he found that the waiter was watching 
him from the window of the restaurant, and it seemed to the 
young man that the pale, servile face wore a malicious smile. 
With the feeling of disconcertion that springs from being caught 
in an impulsive action we have believed unobserved, Maurice 
spun round on his heel and took a few quick steps in the 
opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the 
window, however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner 
stopped altogether. He would at least have liked to know her 
name. And what in all the world was he to do with himself 
now? 

Clouds had gathered ; the airy blue and whiteness of the 
morning had become a level sheet of grey, which wiped the 
colour out of everything; the wind, no longer tempered by the 
sun, was chilly, as it whirled down the narrow streets and 
freaked about the corners. There was little temptation now to 
linger on one’s steps. But Maurice Guest was loath to return 
to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himself 
up with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat 
collar, he began to walk slowly along the curved Grim - 
maischestrasse. But the streets were by this time black with 
people, most of whom came hurrying towards him, brisk and 
bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailing dullness, at the 
prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He was continually 
obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow a 


MAURICE GUEST 


ii 


bunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the 
wind beneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy- 
capped, thickset students, to pass him by, unbroken; and it 
seemed to him that he was more frequently off the pavement 
than on it. He began to feel disconsolate among these jovial 
people, who were hastening forward, with such spirit, to some 
end, and he had not gone far, before he turned down a side 
street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by his environ- 
ment, which, with the sun’s retreat, had lost its charm, he gave 
himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in 
thinking over all that had been said by his quondam acquaint- 
ance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and 
felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way 
down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid 
no attention to where he was going. The falling darkness 
made the quaint streets look strangely alike; it gave them, too, 
an air of fantastic unreality : the dark old houses, marshalled in 
rows on either side, stood as if lost in contemplation, in the 
saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps, which 
started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the 
fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept 
from side to side in the wind like a woman’s hair — these things 
made his surroundings seem still shadowier and less real. 

He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what 
was apparently the outskirts of the town. With much dif- 
ficulty he made his way back, but he was still far from certain 
of his whereabouts, when an unexpected turn to the right 
brought him out on the spacious Augustusplatz , in front of the 
New Theatre. He had been in this square once already, but 
now its appearance was changed. The big buildings that 
flanked it were lit up; the file of droschkes waiting for fares, 
under the bare trees, formed a dotted line of lights. A double 
row of hanging lamps before the Cafe Frangais made the corner 
of the Grimmaischestrasse dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, 
the massive white theatre was awake as well. Lights shone 
from all its high windows, streamed out through the Corinthian 
columns and low-porched doorways. Its festive air was invit- 
ing, after his twilight wanderings, and he went across the 
square to it. Immediately before the theatre, early comers 
stood in knots and chatted; programme- and text-vendors cried 
and sold their wares ; people came hurrying from all directions, 
as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and disap- 
peared beneath the portico. 


12 


MAURICE GUEST 


He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he 
was left; he again was the outsider. And now, as he stood 
there in the deserted square, which, a moment before, had 
been so animated, he had a sudden sinking of the heart: he was 
seized by that acute sense of desolation that lies in wait for one, 
caught by nightfall, alone in a strange city. It stirs up a wild 
longing, not so much for any particular spot on earth, as for 
some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off an intolerable 
loneliness. 

He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near 
the railway station, at which he was staying until he found 
lodgings. He was tired out, and for the first time became thor- 
oughly conscious of this; but the depression that now closed 
in upon him, was not due to fatigue alone, and he knew it. 
In sane moments — such as the present — when neither excite- 
ment nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under no 
illusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, 
he admitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in 
the usual way. He understood perfectly that it was by no 
means a matter of merely stretching out his hand, to pluck what 
he would, from this tree that waved before him; he reminded 
himself with some bitterness that he stood, an unheralded 
stranger, before a solidly compact body of things and people, 
on which he had not yet made any impression. It was the old 
story: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the whole 
— gods and men — and, at the same time, was only too well 
aware of the laborious process that was his sole means of entry 
and fellowship. Again — to instance another of his mental 
follies — the pains he had been at to take possession of the town, 
to make it respond to his forced interpretation of it! In 
reality, it had repelled him — yes, he was chilled to the heart 
by the aloofness of this foreign town, to which not a single tie 
yet bound him. 

By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bed- 
room, he sat and wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe 
arrival. About to close the envelope, he hesitated, and then, 
unfolding the sheet of paper again, added a few lines to what 
he had written. These cost him more trouble than all the rest. 

Once more , hearty thanks to you both , my dear parents , for 
letting me have my own way. I hope you will never have rea- 
son to regret it. One thing, at least, I can promise you, and 
that is, that not a day of my time here shall be wasted or mis- 


MAURICE GUEST 


13 


spent. You have not, I know, the same faith in me that I have 
myself , and this has often been a bitter thought to me. But 
only have patience . Something stronger than myself drove me 
to it, and if I am to succeed anywhere, it will be here . And I 
mean to succeed, if human will can do it. 

He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to 
sleep. But his brain was active, and the street was noisy; peo- 
ple talked late in the adjoining room, and trod heavily in the 
one above. It was long after midnight before the house was 
still and he fell into an uneasy sleep. 

Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he 
wakened in a cold sweat. Once more he was wandering 
through the streets, as he had done the previous day, apparently 
in search of something he could not find. But he did not know 
himself what he sought. All of a sudden, on turning a corner, 
he came upon a crowd of people gathered round some object 
in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here it is. 
He could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people, 
who were muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to 
keep him back. At all costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the 
mysterious thing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing 
through the crowd to reach it, when a great clamour arose; 
every one sprang back, and fled wildly, shrieking : “ Moloch, 
Moloch ! ” He did not know in the least what it meant, but 
the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, and he, 
too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets and 
down, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, 
malignant eye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should 
see the awful thing behind him ; fled on and on, through streets 
that grew ever vaguer and more shadowy, till at last his feet 
would carry him no further: he sank down, with a loud cry, 
sank down, down, down, and wakened to find that he was 
sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn was 
stealing in at the sides of the window. 


II 


In Maurice Guest, it might be said that the smouldering un- 
rest of two generations burst into flame. As a young man, his 
father, then a poor teacher in a small provincial town, had 
been a prey to certain dreams and wishes, which harmonised ill 
with the conditions of his life. When, for example, on a mild 
night, he watched the moon scudding a silvery, cloud-flaked 
sky; when white clouds sailed swiftly, and soft spring breezes 
were hastening past; when, in a word, all things seemed to be 
making for some place, unknown, afar-off, where he was not, 
then he, too, was seized with a desire to be moving, to strap on 
a knapsack and be gone, to wander through foreign countries, 
to see strange cities and hear strange tongues, was unconsciously 
filled with the desire to taste, lighthearted, irresponsible, the 
joys and experiences of the JVanderjahre , before settling down 
to face the matter-of-factness of life. And as the present con- 
tinually pushed the realisation of his dreams into the future, 
he satisfied the immediate thirst of his soul by playing the 
flute, and by breathing into the thin, reedy tones he drew from 
it, all that he dreamed of, but would never know. For he pres- 
ently came to a place in his life where two paths diverged, and 
he was forced to make a choice between them. It was charac- 
teristic of the man that he chose the way of least resistance, and 
having married, more or less improvidently, he turned his back 
on the visions that had haunted his youth : afterwards, the cares, 
great and small, that came in the train of the years, drove them 
ever further into the background. Want of sympathy in his 
home-life blunted the finer edges of his nature ; of a gentle and 
yielding disposition, he took on the commonplace colour of his 
surroundings. After years of unhesitating toil, it is true, the 
most pressing material needs died down, but the dreams and 
ambitions had died, too, never to come again. And as it is in 
the nature of things that no one is less lenient towards romantic 
longings than he who has suffered disappointment in them, who 
has failed to transmute them into reality, so, in this case, the 
son’s first tentative leanings to a wider life, met with a more 
deeply- rooted, though less decisive, opposition, on the part of 
the father than of the mother. 


14 


MAURICE GUEST 


15 


But Maurice Guest had a more tenacious hold on life. 

The home in which he grew up, was one of those cheerless, 
middle-class homes, across which never passes a breath of the 
great gladness, the ideal beauty of life; where thought never 
swings itself above the material interests of the day gone, the 
day to come, and existence grows as timid and trivial as the 
petty griefs and pleasures that intersperse it. The days drip 
past, one by one, like water from a spout after a rain-shower; 
and the dull monotony of them benumbs all wholesome temer- 
ity at its core. Maurice Guest had known days of this kind. 
For before the irksomeness of the school-bench was well behind 
him, he had begun his training as a teacher, and as soon as he 
had learnt how to instil his own half-digested knowledge into 
the minds of others, he received a small post in the school at 
which his father taught. The latter had, for some time, secretly 
cherished a wish to send the boy to study at the neighbouring 
university, to make a scholar of his eldest son ; but the longer he 
waited, the more unfavourable did circumstances seem, and the 
idea finally died before it was born. 

Maurice Guest looked back on the four years he had just 
come through, with bitterness; and it was only later, when he 
was engrossed heart and soul in congenial work, that he began 
to recognise, and be vaguely grateful for, the spirit of order 
with which they had familiarised him. At first, he could not 
recall them without an aversion that was almost physical : 
this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of mood and 
feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stir- 
rings; the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his 
inadequacy and distaste for a task that grew day by day more 
painful. His own knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, 
too slight for self-confidence, just too much an'd too fresh to 
allow him to generalise with the unthinking assurance that was 
demanded of him. Yet had anyone, he asked himself, more 
obstacles to overcome than he, in his efforts to set himself free? 
This silent, undemonstrative father, who surrounded himself 
with an unscalable wall of indifference; this hard-faced, care- 
worn mother, about whose mouth the years had traced deep 
lines, and for whom, in the course of a single-handed battle 
with life, the true reality had come to be success or failure in 
the struggle for bread. What was art to them but an empty 
name, a pastime for the drones and idlers of existence? How 
could he set up his ambitions before them, to be bowled over 
like so many ninepins? When, at length, after much heart- 


i6 


MAURICE GUEST 


burning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by a 
healthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against 
the uselessness of the conflict, and doggedly resolve to put an 
end to it, he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to 
his aid all the strengthening egoism, which is latent in every 
more or less artistic nature. To the mother, in her honest 
narrowness, the son’s choice of a calling which she held to be 
unfitting, was something of a tragedy. She allowed no item 
of her duty to escape her, and moved about the house as usual, 
sternly observant of her daily task, but her lips were com- 
pressed to a thin line, and her face reflected the anger that 
burnt in her heart, too deep for speech. In the months that 
followed, Maurice learnt that the censure hardest to meet is 
that which is never put into words, which refuses to argue or 
discuss: he chafed inwardly against the unspoken opposition that 
will not come out to be grappled with, and overthrown. And, 
as he was only too keenly aware, there was more to be faced 
than a mere determined aversion to the independence with 
which he had struck out : there was, in the first place, a pardon- 
ably human sense of aggrievedness that the eldest-born should 
cross their plans and wishes; that, after the year-long care and 
thought they had bestowed on him, he should demand fresh 
efforts from them; and, again, most harassing of all and most 
invulnerable, such an entire want of faith in the powers he was 
yearning to test — the prophet’s lot in the mean blindness of 
the family — that, at times, it threatened to shake his hard-won 
faith in himself. — But before the winter drew to a close he was 
away. 

Away! — to go out into the world and be a musician — that 
was his longing and his dream. And he never came to quite 
an honest understanding with himself on this point, for desire 
and dream were interwoven in his mind ; he could not separate 
the one from the other. But when he weighed them, and 
allowed them to rise up and take shape before him, it was in- 
variably in this order that they did so. In reality, although he 
himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some 
extent as means to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened 
to its presence, he clutched — like a drowning man who seizes 
upon a spar — clutched and held fast to his talent. But the 
necessary insight into his powers had first to be gained, for it 
was not one of those talents which, from the beginning, strut 
their little world with the assurance of the peacock. He was, it 
is true, gifted with an instinctive feeling for the value and 


MAURICE GUEST 


i7 


significance of tones — as a child he sang by ear in a small, 
sweet voice, which gained him the only notice he received at 
school, and he easily picked out his notes, and taught himself 
little pieces, on the old-fashioned, silk-faced piano, which had 
belonged to his mother as a girl, and at which, in the early 
days of her marriage, she had sung in a high, shrill voice, the 
sentimental songs of her youth. But here, for want of in- 
centive, matters remained ; Maurice was kept close at his 
school-books, and, boylike, he had no ambition to distinguish 
himself in a field so different from that in which his comrades 
won their spurs. It was only when, with the end of his school- 
days in sight, he was putting away childish things, that he 
seriously turned his attention to the piano and his hands. They 
were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new 
occupation soon engrossed him deeply; he gave up all his spare 
time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a pro- 
ficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a 
local teacher of music, who, scenting talent, dismissed pre- 
liminaries with the assurance of his kind, and initiated his 
pupil into all that is false and meretricious in the literature of 
the piano — the cheaply pathetic, the tinsel of transcription, the 
titillating melancholy of Slavonic dance-music — to leave him, 
but for an increased agility of finger, not a whit further for- 
ward than he had found him. Then followed months when the 
phantom of discontent stalked large through Maurice’s life, 
grew, indeed, day by day more tangible, more easily defined; 
for there came the long, restless summer evenings, when it 
seemed as if a tranquil darkness would never fall and bar off 
the distant, the unattainable; and as he followed some flat, 
white country road, that was lost to sight on the horizon as a 
tapering line, or looked out across a stretch of low, luxuriant 
meadows, the very placidity of which made heart and blood 
throb quicker, in a sense of opposition: then the desire to have 
finished with the life he knew, grew almost intolerable, and 
only a spark was needed to set his resolve ablaze. 

It was one evening when the summer had already dragged 
itself to a close, that Maurice walked through a drizzling rain 
to the neighbouring cathedral town, to attend a performance 
of Elijah. It was the first important musical experience of his 
life, and, carried away by the volumes of sound, he repressed 
his agitation so ill, that it became apparent to his neighbour, a 
small, wizened, old man, who was leaning forward, his hands 
hanging between his knees and his eyes fixed on the floor, al- 


i8 


MAURICE GUEST 


ternately shaking and nodding his head. In the interval be- 
tween the parts, they exchanged a few words, halting, excited 
on Maurice’s part, interrogative on his companion’s; when the 
performance was over, they walked a part of the way together, 
and found so much to say, that often, after this, when his week’s 
work was behind him, Maurice would cover the intervening 
miles for the pleasure of a few hours’ conversation with this 
new friend. In a small, dark room, the air of which was 
saturated with tobacco-smoke, he learned, by degrees, the story 
of the old musician’s life: how, some thirty years previously, 
he had drifted into the midst of this provincial population, 
where he found it easy to earn enough for his needs, and where 
his position was below that of a dancing-master; but how, long 
ago, in his youth — that youth of which he spoke with a far- 
away tone in his voice, and at which he seemed to be looking 
out as at a fading shore — it had been his intention to perfect 
himself as a pianist. Life had been against him; when the re- 
solve was strongest, poverty and ill-health kept him down, and 
since then, with the years that passed, he had come to see that his 
place would only have been among the multitude of little 
talents, whose destiny it is to imitate and vulgarise the strivings 
of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of mediocrity. And so, 
he had chosen that his life should be a failure — a failure, that 
is, in the eyes of the world; for himself, he judged otherwise. 
The truth that could be extracted from words was such a 
fluctuating, relative truth. Failure! success! — what was suc- 
cess, but a clinging fast, unabashed by smile or neglect, to that 
better part in art, in one’s self, that cannot be taken away? — 
never for a thought’s space being untrue to the ideal each one of 
us bears in his breast ; never yielding jot or tittle to the world’s 
opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly 
conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard 
the lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was 
at one with himself, his life alone was a harmonious whole. 

To Maurice Guest, all this mattered little or not at all; it 
was merely the unavoidable introduction. The chief thing was 
that the old man had known the world which Maurice so de- 
sired to know ; he had seen life, had lived much of his youth in 
foreign lands, and had the conversation been skilfully set agoing 
in this direction, he would lay a wrinkled hand on his listener’s 
shoulder, and tell him of this shadowy past, with short hoarse 
chuckles of pleasure and reminiscence, which invariably ended 
in a cough. He painted it in vivid colours, and with the un- 


MAURICE GUEST 19 1 

>4 

conscious heightening of effect that comes natural to one who 
looks back upon a happy past, from which the countless pricks 
and stings that make up reality have faded, leaving in their place 
a sense of dreamy, unreal brightness, like that of sunset upon 
distant hills. He told him of Germany, and the gay, careless 
years he had spent there, working at his art, years of inspiriting, 
untrammelled progress; told him of famous musicians he had 
seen and known, of great theatre performances at which he had 
assisted, of stirring premieres , long since forgotten, of burning 
youthful enthusiasms, of nights sleepless with holy excitement, 
and days of fruitful, meditative idleness. Under the spell of 
these reminiscences, he seemed to come into touch again with 
life, and his eyes lit with a spark of the old fire. At moments, 
he forgot his companion altogether, and gazed long and silently 
before him, nodding and smiling to himself at the memories he 
had stirred up in his brain, memories of things that had long 
ceased to be, of people who had long been quiet and unassertive 
beneath their handful of earth, but for whom alone, the brave, 
fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he would lose him- 
self among strange names, in vague histories of those who had 
borne these names, and of what they had become in their sub- 
sequent journeyings towards the light, for which they had set 
out, side by side, wfith so much ardour (and oftenest what he 
had to tell was a modest mediocrity) ; but the greater number 
of them had lost sight one of the other; the most inseparable 
friends had, once parted, soon forgotten. And the bluish smoke 
sent upwards as he talked, in clouds and spirals that mounted 
rapidly and vanished, seemed to Maurice symbolic of the brief 
and shadowy lives that were unrolled before him. But, after 
all this, when the lights came, the piano was opened, and then, 
for an hour or two, the world was forgotten in a different way. 
It was here that the chief landmarks of music emerged from the 
mists in which, for Maurice, they had hitherto been enveloped ; 
here he learned that Bach and Beethoven were giants, and 
made uncertain efforts at appreciation; learnt that Gliick was 
a great composer, Mozart a genius of many parts, Mendelssohn 
; the direct successor in this line of kings. Sonatas, symphonies, 

; operas, were hammered out with tremendous force and pre- 
| cision on the harsh, scrupulously tuned piano; and all were 
I dominated alike by the hoarse voice of the old man, who never 
wavered, never faltered, but sang from beginning to end with 
all his might. Each one of the pleasant hours spent in this 
i new world helped to deepen Maurice’s resolution to free him- 


20 


MAURICE GUEST 


self while there was yet time ; each one gave more clearness and 
precision to his somewhat formless desires; for, in all that con- 
cerned his art, the nameless old musician hated his native land, 
with the hatred of the bigot for those who are hostile or in- 
different to his faith. 

With a long and hot-chased goal in sight, a goal towards 
which our hearts, in joyous eagerness, have already leapt out, 
it is astonishing how easy it becomes to make light of the last, 
monotonous stretch of road that remains to be travelled. Is 
there not, just beyond, a resting-place? — and cool, green 
shadows? Events and circumstances which had hitherto loomed 
forth gigantic, threatening to crush, now appeared to Maurice 
trivial and of little moment; he saw them in other proportions 
now, for it seemed to him that he was no longer in their midst : 
he stood above them and overlooked them, and, with his eyes 
fixed upon a starry future, he joyfully prepared himself for his 
new life. What is more, those around him helped him to this 
altered view of things. For as the present marched steadily 
upon the future, devouring as it went; as the departure this 
future contained took on the shape of a fact, the countless de- 
tails of which called for attention, it began to be accepted as 
even the most unpalatable facts in the long run usually are, 
with an ungracious resignation in face of the inevitable. Thus, 
with all his ardour to be gone, Maurice Guest came to see 
the last stage of his home-life almost in a bright light, and even 
with a touch of melancholy, as something that was fast slipping 
from him, never to be there in all its entirety, exactly as it now 
was, again: the last calm hour of respite before he plunged 
into the triumphs, but also into the tossings and agitations of 
the future. 


Ill 


It was April, and a day such as April will sometimes bring: 
one of those days when the air is full of a new, mysterious 
fragrance, when the sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, 
and high clouds hang motionless in the far-distant blue — a day 
at the very heels of which it would seem that summer was lurk- 
ing. Maurice Guest stood at his window, both sides of which 
were flung open, drinking in the warm air, and gazing absently 
up at the stretch of sky, against which the dark roof-lines of 
the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were in his 
pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly to 
himself, but what, he could not have told: whether some frag- 
ment of melody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and 
now came to his lips, or whether a mere audible expression of 
his mood. The strong, unreal sun of the afternoon was just 
beginning to reach the house; it slanted in, golden, by the side 
of the window, and threw on the wall above the piano, a single 
long bar of light. 

He leaned over and looked down into the street far below — 
still no one there! But it was only half-past four. He 
stretched himself long and luxuriously, as if, by doing so, he 
would get rid of a restlessness which arose from repressed 
physical energy, and also from an impatience to be more keenly 
conscious of life, to feel it, as it were, quicken in him, not unakin 
to that passionate impulse towards perfection, which, out-of- 
doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: he 
had a day’s imprisonment behind him, and all spring’s magic 
was at work to ferment his blood. How small and close the 
room was! He leaned out on the sill, as far out as he could, 
in the sun. It was shining full down the street now, gilding the 
canal-like river at the foot, and throwing over the tall, dingy 
houses on the opposite side, a tawdry brightness, which, unlike 
that of the morning with its suggestion of dewy shade, only 
served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster and paint- 
less window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where 
high-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, 
and also to a subsequent decay, now openly admitted . in the 
little placards which dotted them here and there, bearing the 

21 


22 


MAURICE GUEST 


bold-typed words Garqon logis , and dangling bravely yellow 
from the windows of the cheap lodgings they proclaimed vacant. 
It was very still; the hoarse voice of a fruit-seller crying his 
wares in the adjoining streets, was to be heard at intervals, but 
each time less distinctly, and from the distance came the faint 
tones of a single piano. How different it was in the morning! 
Then, if, pausing a moment from his work, he opened the 
window and leaned out for a brief refreshment, what a delight- 
ful confusion of sounds met his ear! Pianos rolled noisily up 
and down, ploughing one through the other, beating one against 
the other, key to key, rhythm to rhythm, each in a clamorous 
despair at being unable to raise its voice above the rest, at hav- 
ing to form part of this jumble of discord: some so near at 
hand or so directly opposite that, none the less, it was occasion- 
ally possible to follow them through the persistent reiterations of 
a fugue, or through some brilliant glancing etude , the notes 
of^which flew off like sparks; others, further away, of which 
were audible only the convulsive treble outbursts and the tone- 
less rumblings of the bass, now and then cut shrilly through 
by the piercing sharpness of a violin, now and then, at quieter 
moments, borne up and accompanied by the deep, guttural 
tones of a neighbouring violoncello. This was always dis- 
covered at work upon scales, uncertain, hesitating scales on the 
lower strings, and, heard suddenly, after the other instruments’ 
genial hubbub, it sounded like some inarticulate animal making 
uncouth attempts at expression. At rare intervals there came a 
lull, and then, before all burst forth again together, or fell in, 
one by one, a single piano or the violin would, like a solo voice 
in a symphony, bear the whole burden ; or if the wind were in 
the west, it would sometimes carry over with it, from the 
woods on the left,- the mournful notes of a French horn, which 
some unskilful player had gone out to practise. 

This was that new world of which he was now a part — into 
which he had been so auspiciously received. 

Yes, the beginning and the thousand petty disquiets that go 
with beginnings, w T ere behind him ; he had made a start, and he 
believed a good one — thanks to Dove. He was really grateful 
to Dove. A chance acquaintance, formed on one of those early 
days when he loitered, timid and unsure, about the Bureau of 
the Conservatorium, Dove had taken him up with what struck 
even the grateful new-comer as extraordinary good-nature, 
going deliberately out of his way to be of service to him, meet- 
ing him at every turn with assistance and advice. It was Dove 


MAURICE GUEST 


23 


who had helped him over the embarrassments of the examina- 
tion; it was through Dove’s influence that he had obtained a 
private interview with Schwarz, and, in Dove’s opinion, 
Schwarz was the only master in Leipzig under whom it was 
worth wdiile to study; the only one w T ho could be relied on to 
give the exhaustive technique that was indispensable, without, 
in the process, destroying what was of infinitely more account, 
the individuality, the temperament of the student. This and 
more, Dove set forth at some length in their conversations; 
then, warming to his work, he would go further: would go on 
to speak of phrasings and interpretations; of an artistic use of 
the pedals, and the legitimate participation of the emotions; of 
the confines of absolute music as touched in the Ninth Sym- 
phony: would refer incidentally to Schopenhauer and make 
Wagner his authority, using terms that were new to his hearer, 
and, now and then, by way of emphasis, bringing his palm down 
flat and noiselessly upon the table. — It had not taken them long 
to become friends; fellow-countrymen, of the same age, with 
similar aims and interests, they had soon slipped into one of 
the easy-going friendships of youth. 

A quarter to five! As the strokes from the neighbouring 
church-clock died away, the melody of Siegfried’s horn was 
whistled up from the street, and looking over, Maurice saw 
his friend. He seized his music and went hastily down the 
four flights of stairs. 

They crossed the river and came to newer streets. It was 
delightful out-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they 
turned, and a few ragged, fleecy clouds that it was driving up, 
only made the sky seem bluer. The two young men walked 
leisurely, laughing and talking rather loudly. Maurice Guest 
had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a touch of musi- 
cianly disorder, but Dove’s lengthier residence had left no trace 
upon him; he might have stepped that day from the streets of 
the provincial English town to which he belonged. His well- 
brushed clothes sat with an easy inelegance, his tie was small, 
his linen clean, and the only concession he made to his sur- 
roundings, the broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, looked oddly out 
of place on his close-cut hair. He carried himself erectly, 
swinging a little on his hips. 

As they went, he passed in review the important items of 
the day: so-and-so had strained a muscle, so-and-so had spoilt 
a second piano. But his particular interest centred upon that 
evening’s Abendunterhaltung. A man named Schilsky, whom 


24 


MAURICE GUEST 


it was no exaggeration to call their finest, very finest violinist, 
was to play Vieuxtemps’ Concerto in D. Dove all but smacked 
his lips as he spoke of it. In reply to a query from Maurice, 
he declared with vehemence that this Schilsky was a genius. 
Although so great a violinist, he could play almost every other 
instrument with ease; his memory had become a by-word; his 
compositions were already famous. At the present moment, 
he was said to be at work upon a symphonic poem, having for 
its base a new and extraordinary book, half poetry, half phil- 
osophy, a book which he, Dove, could confidently assert, would 
effect a revolution in human thought, but of which, just at 
the minute, he was unable to remember the name. Infected 
by his friend’s enthusiasm, Maurice here recalled having, only 
the day before, met some one who answered to Dove’s de- 
scription: the genial Pole had been storming up the steps of 
the Conservatorium, two at a time, with wild, affrighted eyes, 
and a halo of dishevelled auburn hair. — Dove made no doubt 
that he had been seized with a sudden inspiration. 

Gewandhaus and Conservatorium lay close together, in a 
new quarter of the town. The Conservatorium, a handsome, 
stone-faced building, three lofty storeys high, was just now 
all the more imposing in appearance as it stood alone in an 
unfinished street-block, and as, opposite, hoardings still shut in 
all that had yet been raised of the great library, which would 
eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of its long 
front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to 
impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone 
daily out and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving 
efforts, imperative on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, 
to many, was as it were personified by the concert-house in 
the adjoining square: it was hither, towards this clear-limned 
goal, that bore him, like a magic carpet, the young enthusiast’s 
most ambitious dream. — But in the life that swarmed about 
the Conservatorium, there was nothing of a tedious austerity. 
It was one of the briskest times of day, and the short street and 
the steps of the building were alive with young people of both 
sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the 
corner, or stood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike 
were conspicuous for a rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth 
faces and bushy hair, while the numerous girls, with whom 
they paused to laugh and trifle, were, for the most part, showy 
in dress and loudly vivacious in manner. On the kerbstone, a 
knot of the latter, tittering among themselves, shot furtive 


MAURICE GUEST 


25 


glances at Dove and Maurice as they passed. Here, a pretty, 
laughing face was the centre of a little circle; there, a bevy of 
girls clustered about a young man, who, his hands in his pockets, 
leaned carelessly against the door-arch ; and again, another, 
plump and much befeathered, with a string of large pearl- 
beads round her fat, white neck, had isolated herself from the 
rest, to take up, on the steps, a more favourable stand. A 
master who went by, a small, jovial man in a big hat, had a 
word for all the girls, even a chuck of the chin for one un- 
usually saucy face. Inside, classes were filing out of the va- 
rious rooms, other classes were going in; there was a noisy 
flocking up and down the broad, central staircase, a crowding 
about the notice-board, a going and coming in the long, stone 
corridors. The concert-hall was being lighted. 

Maurice slowly made his way through the midst of all these 
people, while Dove loitered, or stepped out of hearing, with 
one friend after another. In a side corridor, off which, cell- 
like, opened a line of rooms, they pushed a pair of double- 
doors, and went in to take their lesson. 

The room they entered was light and high, and contained, 
besides a couple of grand pianos, a small table and a row of 
wooden chairs. Schwarz stood with his back to the window, 
biting his nails. He was a short, thickset man, with keen eyes, 
and a hard, prominent mouth, which was rather emphasised 
than concealed, by the fair, scanty tuft of hair that hung 
from his chin. Upon the two new-comers, he bent a cold, 
deliberate gaze, which, for some instants, he allowed to rest 
chillingly on them, then as deliberately withdrew, having — 
so at least it seemed to those who were its object — having, 
without the tremor of an eyelid, scanned them like an open 
page: it was the look, impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician 
for his patient. At the piano, a young man was playing the 
Waldstein Sonata. So intent was he on what he was doing, 
that his head all but touched the music standing open before 
him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously from 
side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood 
out beads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves 
were a little turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, 
and drawing a soiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it 
rapidly over neck and brow. In the Adagio which followed, he 
displayed an extreme delicacy of touch — not, however, but 
what this also cost him some exertion, for, previous to the 
striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described a curve in 


26 


MAURICE GUEST 


the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered, the others 
slightly raised, and there was always a second of something 
like suspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. 
But suddenly, without warning, just as the last, lingering 
tones were dying to the close they sought, the Adagio slipped 
over into the limpid gaiety of the Rondo , and then, there was 
no time more for premeditation: then his hands twinkled up 
and down, joining, crossing, flying asunder, alert with little 
sprightly quirks and turns, going ever more nimbly, until the 
brook was a river, the allegretto a prestissimo, which flew 
wildly to its end amid a shower of dazzling trills. 

Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time 
to time, however, when unobserved, he swept the three lis- 
teners with a rapid glance. Maurice Guest was quite carried 
away; he had never heard playing like this, and he leaned for- 
ward in his seat, and gazed full at the player, in open ad- 
miration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin man, with one of 
those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould of 
feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut 
of hair and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conven- 
tional Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a 
languid interest, which seemed unable to get the upper hand 
of melancholy thoughts. Maurice, who believed his feelings 
shared by all about him, was chilled by such indifference: 
he only learned later, after they had become friends, that 
nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting interest, save 
what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as rev- 
erent as if at prayer; but there were also moments when, with 
his head a little on one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not 
fully at one with the player’s rendering; others again, after 
a passage of peculiar brilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a 
humbly grateful look. While Schwarz, the sonata over, was 
busy with his pencil on the margin of the music, Dove leaned 
over to Maurice and whispered behind his hand: “Fiirst — our 
best pianist.” 

Now came the turn of the others, and the master’s atten- 
tion wandered ; he stretched himself, yawned, and sighed aloud, 
then, in the search for something he could not find, turned 
out on the lid of the second piano the contents of sundry 
pockets. While Dove played, he wrote as if for life in a 
bulky notebook. 

Maurice remarked this without being properly conscious of 
it, so impressed had he been by the sonata. The exultant 


MAURICE GUEST 


21 


beauty of the great final theme had permeated his every fibre, 
inciting him, emboldening him, and, still under the sway of 
this little elation when his own turn to play came, he was the 
richer by it, and acquitted himself with unusual verve. 

As the class was about to leave the room, Schwarz signed 
to Maurice to remain behind. For several moments, he paced 
the floor in silence; then he stopped suddenly short in front 
of the young man, and, with legs apart, one hand at his back, 
he said in a tone which wavered between being brutal and 
confidential, emphasising his words with a series of smart 
pencil-raps on his hearer’s shoulder: 

“Let me tell you something: if I were not of the opinion 
that you had ability, I should not detain you this even- 
ing. It is no habit of mine, mark this, to interfere with 
my pupils. Outside this room, most of them do not exist for 
me. In your case, I am making an exception, because . . .” 
— Maurice was here so obviously gratified that the speaker 
made haste to substitute: “ because I should much like to know 
how it is that you come to me in the state you do.” And 
without waiting for a reply: “For you know nothing, or, 
let us say, worse than nothing, since what you do know, you 
must make it your first concern to forget.” He paused, and the 
young man’s face fell so much that he prolonged the pause, to 
enjoy the discomfiture he had produced. “ But give me time,” 
he continued, “ adequate time, and I will undertake to make 
something of you.” He lowered his voice, and the taps became 
more confidential. “ There is good stuff here ; you have talent, 
great talent, and, as I have observed to-day, you are not want- 
ing in intelligence. But,” and again his voice grew harsher, 
his eye more piercing, “ understand me, if you please, no 
trifling with other studies; let us have no fiddling, no com- 
posing. Who works with me, works for me alone. And a 
lifetime, I repeat it, a lifetime, is not long enough to master 
such an instrument as this!” 

He brought his hand down heavily on the lid of the piano, 
and glared at Maurice as if he expected the latter to con- 
tradict him. Then, noisily clearing his throat, he began anew 
to pace the room. 

As Maurice stood waiting for his dismissal, with very varied 
feelings, of which, however, a faint pride was uppermost; 
as he stood waiting, the door opened, and a girl looked in. 
She hesitated a moment, then entered, and going up to Schwarz, 
asked him something in a low voice. He nodded an assent, 


28 


MAURICE GUEST 


nodded two or three times, and with quite another face; its 
hitherto unmoved severity had given way to an indulgent 
friendliness. She laid her hat and jacket on the table, and went 
to the piano. 

Schwarz motioned Maurice to a chair. He sat down almost 
opposite her. 

And now came for him one of those moments in life, which, 
unlooked-for, undivined, send before them no promise of being 
different, in any way, from the commonplace moments that 
make up the balance of our days. No gently graduated steps 
lead up to them: they are upon us with the violent abruptness 
of a streak of lightning, and like this, they, too, may leave 
behind them a scarry trace. What such a moment holds within 
it, is something which has never existed for us before, some- 
thing it has never entered our minds to go out and seek — the 
corner of earth, happened on by chance, which comes most near 
the Wineland of our dreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, 
which brings us a new god; the face of the woman who is 
to be our fate — but, whatever it may be, let it once exist for 
us, and the soul responds forthwith, catching in blind haste at 
the dimly missed ideal. 

For one instant Maurice Guest had looked at the girl be- 
fore him with unconcern, but the next it was with an intent- 
ness that soon became intensity, and feverishly grew, until he 
could not tear his eyes away. The beauty, whose spell thus 
bound him, was of that subtle kind which leaves many a one 
cold, but, as if just for this reason, is almost always fateful 
for those who feel its charm: at them is lanced its accumulated 
force. The face was far from faultless; there was no regu- 
larity of feature, no perfection of line, nor was there more 
than a touch of the sweet girlish freshness that gladdens like 
a morning in May. The features, save for a peremptory turn 
of mouth and chin, were unremarkable, and the expression 
was distant, unchanging . . . but what was that to him? 
This deep white skin, the purity of which was only broken 
by the pale red of the lips; this dull black hair, which lay 
back from the low brow in such wonderful curves, and seemed, 
of itself, to fall into the loose knot on the neck — there was 
something romantic, exotic about her, which was unlike any- 
thing he had ever seen: she made him think of a rare, hothouse 
flower; some scentless, tropical flower, with stiff, waxen petals. 
And then her eyes! So profound was their darkness that, 
when they threw off their covering of heavy lid, it seemed to 


MAURICE GUEST 


29 


his excited fancy as if they must scorch what they rested on; 
they looked out from the depths of their setting like those of 
a wild beast crouched within a cavern ; they lit up about them 
like stars, and when they fell, they went out like stars, and 
her face took on the pallor of early dawn. 

She was playing from memory. She gazed straight before 
her with far-away eyes, which only sometimes looked down 
at her hands, to aid them in a difficult passage. At her belt, 
she wore a costly yellow rose, and as she once leaned towards 
the treble, where both hands were at work close together, it 
fell to the floor. Maurice started forward, and picking it up, 
laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sank a shadowy 
gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid 
no heed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still 
continuing to play, let her eyes rest absently on him. 

They sank their eyes in each other’s. A thrill ran through 
Maurice, a quick, sharp thrill, which no sensation of his 
later life outdid in keenness and which, on looking back, he 
could always feel afresh. The colour rose to his face and his 
heart beat audibly, but he did not lower his eyes, and for not 
doing so, seemed to himself infinitely bold.. A host of con- 
fused feelings bore down upon him, well-nigh blotting out the 
light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up in an over- 
powering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happy thank- 
fulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As 
it swelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour 
it forth, to make an offering of this gratefulness — fine tangle 
of her beauty and his own glad mood — and, by sustaining her 
look, he seemed to lay the offering at her feet. Nor would 
any tongue have persuaded him that she did not understand. 
The few seconds were eternities: when she turned away it was 
as if untold hours had passed over him in a body, like a flight 
of birds; as if a sudden gulf had gaped between where he now 
was and where he had previously stood. 

Dismissed curtly, with a word, he hung about the corridor 
in the hope of seeing her again; but the piano went on and 
on, unceasingly. Here, after some time, he was found by 
Dove, who carried him off with loud expressions of surprise. 

The concert was more than half over. The main part of 
the hall was brightly lit and full of people: from behind, one 
looked across a sea of heads. On the platform at the other 
end, a girl in red was playing a sonata; a master sat by her 
side, and leant forward, at regular intervals, to turn the 


30 


MAURICE GUEST 


leaves of the music. Dove and Maurice remained standing 
at the back, under the gallery, among a portion of the audi- 
ence which shifted continuously: those about them wandered 
in and out of the hall at pleasure, now inside, head in hand, criti- 
cally intent, now out in the vestibule, stretching their legs, 
lounging in easy chat. In the pause that followed the sonata, 
Dove went towards the front, to join some ladies who beck- 
oned him, and, while some one sang a noisy aria, Maurice 
gave himself up to his own thoughts. They all led to the 
same point: how he should contrive to see her again, how he 
should learn her name, and, beside them, everything else 
seemed remote, unreal; he saw the people next him as if from 
a distance. But in a wait that was longer than usual, he 
was awakened to his surroundings : a stir ran over the audience, 
like a gust of wind over still water; the heads in the seats 
before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded ; there 
was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened 
and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed for- 
ward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start 
a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. 
Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. 
He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his 
knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The ac- 
companist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal to 
begin. 

Maurice drew a deep breath of anticipation. But the first 
shrill, sweet notes had hardly cut the silence,, when, the door 
opening once more, some one entered and pushed through the 
standing crowd. He looked round, uneasy at the disturbance, 
and found that it was she: what is more, she came up to his 
very side. He turned away so hastily that he touched her 
arm, causing it to yield a little, and some moments went by 
before he ventured to look again. When he did, in some 
tremor, he saw that, without fear of discovery, he might look 
as long or as often as he chose. She was listening to the 
player with the raptness of a painted saint: her whole face 
listened, the tightened lips, the open nostrils, the wide, vigilant 
eyes. Maurice, lost in her presence, grew dizzy with the scent 
of her hair — that indefinable odour, which has something of 
the raciness in it of new-turned earth — and foolish wishes 
arose and jostled one another in his mind : he would have liked 
to plunge both hands into the dark, luxuriant mass ; still better, 
cautiously to draw his palm down this whitest skin, which, 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i 


seen so near, had a faint, satin-like sheen. The mere imagining 
of it set him throbbing, and the excitement in his blood was 
heightened by the sensuous melancholy of the violin, which, 
just beyond the pale of his consciousness, throbbed and lan- 
guished with him under the masterful bow. 

Shortly before the end of the concerto, she turned and made 
her way out. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then followed. 
But the long white corridors stretched empty before him; 
there was no trace of her to be seen. As he was peering about, 
in places that were strange to him, a tumult of applause shook 
the hall, the doors flew open and the audience poured out. 

Dove had joined other friends, and a number of them left 
the building together; everyone spoke loudly and at once. But 
soon Maurice and Dove outstepped their companions, for 
these came to words over the means used by Schilsky to 
mount, with bravour, a certain gaudy scale of octaves, and, at 
every second pace, they stopped, and wheeled round with elo- 
quent gesture. In their presence Dove had said little; now 
he gave rein to his feelings: his honest face glowed with 
enthusiasm, the names of renowned players ran off his lips 
like beads off a string, and, in predicting Schilsky a career 
still more brilliant, his voice grew husky with emotion. 

Maurice listened unmoved to his friend’s outpouring, and 
the first time Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the 
matter which, in his eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager 
was he to learn something of her, that he even made shift to 
describe her; his attempt fell out lamely, and a second later 
he could have bitten off his tongue. 

Dove had only half an ear for him. 

“Eh? What? What do you say?” he asked as Maurice 
paused; but his thoughts were plainly elsewhere. This fact is, 
just at this moment, he was intent on watching some ladies: 
were they going to notice him or not? The bow made and 
returned, he brought his mind back to Maurice with a great 
show of interest. 

Here, however, they all turned in to Seyffert’s Cafe, and, 
seating themselves at a long, narrow table, waited for Schilsky, 
whom they intended to fete. But minutes passed, a quarter, 
then half of an hour, and still he did not come. To while the 
time, his playing of the concerto was roundly commented and 
discussed. There was none of the ten or twelve young men 
but had the complete jargon of the craft at his finger-tips; 
not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now 


32 


MAURICE GUEST 


detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping 
praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through 
the gamut of opinion,” went forward chiefly in German, which 
the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but 
glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring 
over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or point a 
joke. 

Not having heard a note of Schilsky’s playing, Maurice 
did not trust himself to say much, and so was free to observe 
his right-hand neighbour, a young man who had entered late, 
and taken a vacant chair beside him. To the others present, 
the new-comer paid no heed, to Maurice he murmured an 
absent greeting, and then, having called for beer and emptied 
his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to return whence 
he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent train 
of thought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly 
abrupt. Thus, after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his 
hands, he flung back in his seat wuth a sort of wildness, and 
began to stare fixedly at the ceiling. His face was one of 
those, which, as by a mystery, preserve the innocent beauty of 
their childhood, long after childhood is a thing of the past: 
delicate as the rosy lining of a great sea-shell was the colour 
that spread from below the forked blue veins of the temples, 
and it paled and came again as readily as a girl’s. Girlish, 
too, were the limpid eyes, which, but for a trick of dropping 
unexpectedly, seemed always to be gazing, in thoughtful sur- 
prise, at something that was visible to them alone. As to the 
small, frail body, it existed only for sake of the hands: narrow 
hands, with long, fleshless fingers, nervous hands, that were 
never still. 

All at once, in a momentary lull, he leant towards Maurice, 
and, without even looking up, asked the latter if he could 
recall the opening bars of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde. 
If so, there was a certain point he would like to lay before 
him. 

“ You see, it’s this way, old fellow,” he said confidentially. 
“ I’ve come to the conclusion that if, at the end of the third 
bar, Wagner had ” 

“ Throw him out, throw him out ! ” cried an American who 
was sitting opposite them. “You might as well try to stop 
a nigger in heat as Krafft on Wagner.” 

“ That’s so,” said another American named Ford, who, on 
arriving, had not been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses 


MAURICE GUEST 


33 


of beer, was exceedingly tipsy. “ That’s so. As I’ve always 
said, it’s a disgrace to the township, a disgrace, sir. Ought 
to be put down. Why don’t he write them himself? ” 

From the depths of his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely 
at the speakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out 
a notebook and jotted down an idea. 

Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Boehmer and a Rus- 
sian violinist still harped upon the original string. And, hav- 
ing worked out Schilsky, they passed on to Zeppelin, his master, 
and the Russian, who was not Zeppelin’s pupil, set to showing 
with vehemence that his “ method ” was a worthless one. He 
was barely started when a wiry American, in a high, grating 
voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool: why had he not gone to 
Berlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of dawdling on 
here where he had no more to gain? At this, several of the 
young men laughed and looked significant. Fiirst — he had 
proved to be a jolly little man, who, with unbuttoned vest, 
absorbed large quantities of beer and perspired freely — Fiirst 
alone was of the opinion, which he expressed forcibly, in his 
hearty Saxon dialect, that had Schilsky left Leipzig at this 
particular time, he would have been a fool indeed. 

“ Look here, boys,” he cried, pounding the table to get 
attention. “ That’s all very well, but he must have an eye 
to the practical side of things, too ” 

“ Der biedere Sachse hoch! ” threw in Boehmer, who was 
Prussian, and of a more ideal cast of mind. 

“ — and a chance such as this, he will certainly never have 
again. A hundred thousand marks, if a pfennig, and a face 
to turn after in the street! No, he is a confounded deal 
wiser to stay here and make sure of her, for that sort is as 
slippery as an eel.” 

“ Krafft can tell us; he let her go; is she? — is it true?” 
shouted half a dozen. 

Krafft looked up and winked. His reply was so gross and 
so witty that there was a very howl of mirth. 

“ Krafft hoch , hoch Krafft !” they cried, and roared again, 
until the proprietor, a mild, round-faced man, who was loath 
to meddle with his best customers, advanced to the middle of 
the floor, where he stood smiling uneasily and rubbing his 
hands. 

But it w^as growing late. 

“ Why the devil doesn’t he come ? ” yawned Boehmer. 

“ Perhaps,” said Dove, mouthing deliberately as if he had 


34 MAURICE GUEST 

a good thing on his tongue; perhaps, by now, he is safe in the 
arms of ” 

“Jesus or Morpheus?” asked a cockney ’cellist. 

“Safe in the arms of Jesus!” sang the tipsy pianist; but 
he was outsung by Krafft, who, rising from his seat, gave with 
dramatic gesture: 


O sink’ hernieder, 

Nacht der Liebe, 
gieb Vergessen, 
dass ich lebe . . . 

After this, with much laughter and ado, they broke up to 
seek another cafe in the heart of the town, where the absinthe 
was good and the billiard-table better, two of his friends sup- 
porting Ford, who was testily debating with himself why a 
composer should compose his own works. At the first corner, 
Maurice whispered a word to Dove, and, unnoticed by the 
rest, slipped away. For some time, he heard the sound of 
their voices down the quiet street. A member of the group, 
in defiance of the night, began to sing; and then, just as one 
bird is provoked by another, rose a clear, sweet voice he 
recognised as Krafft’s, in a song the refrain of which was 
sung by all: 


Give me the Rose of Sharon, 

And a bottle of Cyprus wine ! 

What followed was confused, indistinct, but over and over 
again he heard: 

. . . the Rose of Sharon, 

. . . a bottle of Cyprus wine! 

until that, too, was lost in the distance. 

When he reached his room, he did not light the lamp, but 
crossed to the window and stood looking out into the dark- 
ness. The day’s impressions, motley as the changes of a 
kaleidoscope, seethed in his brain, clamoured to be recalled and 
set in order; but he kept them back; he could not face the 
task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in need of a repose 
as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The sky was 
overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon him and 
refreshed him; a few single raindrops fell. In the air a gentle 
melancholy was abroad, and, as he stood there, wax for any 


MAURICE GUEST 


35 


passing mood, it descended on him and enveloped him. He 
gave himself up to it, unresistingly, allowed himself to toy 
with it, to sink beneath it. Just, however, as he was sinking, 
sinking, he was roused, suddenly, as from sleep, by the vivid 
presentiment that something was about to happen to him: it 
seemed as if an important event were looming in the near 
distance, ready to burst in upon his life, and not only instantly, 
but with a monstrous crash of sound. His pulses beat more 
quickly, his nerves stretched, like bows. But it was very still; 
everything around him slept, and the streets were deserted. 

A keen sense of desolation came over him; never, in his 
life, had he felt so utterly alone. In all this great city that 
spread, ocean-like, around him, not a heart was the lighter 
for his being there. Oh, to have some one beside him! — 
some one who would talk soothingly to him, of shadowy, 
far-off things, or, still better, be merely a sympathetic presence. 
He passed rapidly in review people he had known, saw their 
faces and heard their voices, but not one of them would do. 
No, he wanted a friend, the friend he had often dreamed of, 
whose thoughts would be his thoughts, with whom there would 
be no need of speech. Then his longing swelled, grew fiercer 
and more undefined, and a sudden burst of energy convulsed 
him and struggled to find vent. His breath came hard, and 
he stretched his arms out into the night, uncertainly, as if to 
grasp something he did not see; but they fell to his side again. 
He would have liked to sweep through the air, to feel the 
wind rushing dizzily through him; or to be set down before 
some feat that demanded the strength of a Titan — anything, 
no matter what, to be rid of the fever in his veins. But it 
beset him, again and again, only by slow degrees weakening 
and dying away. 

A bitter moisture sprang to his eyes. Leaning his head on 
his arms, he endeavoured to call up her face. But it was of 
no use, though he strained every nerve; for some time he 
could see only the rose that had lain beside her on the piano, 
and in the troubled image that at last crowned his patience, 
her eyes looked out, like jewels, from a setting of golden 
petals. 

Lying wakeful in the darkness, he saw them more clearly. 
Now, though, they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons 
that burnt. If he lit the lamp and tried to read, they got 
between him and the book, and danced up and down the 
pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like stage fireflies. 


MAURICE GUEST 


36 

He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at the pale 
square of the window. And then, just when he was least 
expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so 
distinctly, that he started up on his elbow; and in the second 
or two it remained — a Medusa-face, opaquely white, with 
deep, unfathomable eyes — he recognised, with a shock, that his 
peace of mind was gone; that the sudden experience of a few 
hours back had given his life new meaning; that something 
had happened to him which could not be undone; in other 
words — with an incredulous gasp at his own folly — that he 
was head over ears in love. 

Through the uneasy sleep into which he ultimately fell, 
she, and the yellow rose, and the Rose of Sharon — a giant 
flower, with monstrous crimson petals — passed and repassed, 
in one of those glorious tangles, which no dreamer has ever 
unravelled. 

When he wakened, it was broad daylight, and things wore 
a different aspect. Not that his impression of the night had 
faded, but it w T as forced to retire behind the hard, clear affairs 
of the morning. He got up, full of vigour, impatient to be 
at work, and having breakfasted, sat down at the piano, where 
he remained until his hands dropped from the keys with 
fatigue. Throughout these hours, his mind ran chiefly on the 
words Schwarz had said to him, the previous evening. They 
rose before him in their full significance, and he leisurely 
chewed the honeyed cud of praise. “ I will undertake to make 
something of you, undertake to make something of you ” — 
his brain tore the phrase to tatters. “ Something ” was prop- 
erly vague, as praise should be, and allowed the imagination 
free scope. Under the stimulus, everything came easy; he 
mastered a passage of bound sixths that had baffled him for 
days. And in this elated frame of mind, there was something 
almost pleasurable in the pang with which he would become 
conscious of a shadow in the background, a spot on his sun 
to make him unhappy. 

Unhappy? — no: it gave a zest to his goings-out and comings- 
in. Through long hours of work he was borne up by an ardent 
hope: afterwards, he might see her. It made the streets ex- 
citing places of possible surprises. Might she not, at any 
moment, turn the corner and be before him? Might she not, 
this very instant, be going in the same direction as he, in the 
next street? But a very little of this pleasant dallying with 


MAURICE GUEST 


37 

chance was enough. One morning, when the houses opposite 
were ablaze with sunshine, and he had settled down to practice 
with a keen relish for the obstacles to be overcome; on this 
morning, within half an hour, his mood swung round to 
the other extreme, and, from now on, his desire to see her 
again was a burning unrest, which roused him from sleep, and 
drove him out, at odd hours, no matter what he was doing. 
Moodily he scoured the streets round the Conservatorium, dis- 
concerted by his own folly, and pricked incessantly by the 
consciousness of time wasted. A companion at his side might 
have dispelled the cobwebs; but Dove, his only friend, he 
avoided, for the reason that Dove’s unfailing good spirits 
needed to be met with a similiar mood. And as for speaking 
of the matter, the mere thought of the detailed explanation 
that would now be necessary, did he open his lips, filled him 
with dismay. When four or five days had gone by in this 
manner, without result, he took to hanging about, with other 
idlers, on the steps of the Conservatorium, always hoping that 
she would suddenly emerge from the doors behind him, or 
come towards him, a roll of music in her hand. 

But she never came. 

One afternoon, however, as he loitered there, he encoun- 
tered his acquaintance of the very first day. He recognised 
her while she was still some distance off, by her peculiar 
springy gait; at each step she rose slightly on the front part 
of her foot, as if her heels were on springs. As before, she 
was indifferently dressed; a small, close hat came down over 
her face and hid her forehead; her skirt seemed shrunken, and 
hung limp about her ankles, accentuating the straightness of 
her figure. But below the brim of the hat her eyes were 
as bright as ever, and took note of all that happened. On 
seeing Maurice, she professed to remember him “ perfectly,” 
beginning to speak before she had quite come up to him. 

The following day they met once more at the same place. 
This time, she raised her eyebrows. 

“ You here again? ” she said. 

She disappeared inside the building; but a few minutes later 
returned, and said she was going for a walk: would he come, 
too? 

He assented, with grateful surprise, and they set off to- 
gether in the direction of the woods, as briskly as though they 
were on an errand. But when they had crossed the suspen- 
sion-bridge and reached the quieter paths that ran through 


MAURICE GUEST 


38 

the Nonne , they simultaneously slackened their pace. The 
luxuriant undergrowth of shrub, which filled in, like lace- 
work, the spaces between the tree-trunks, was sprinkled with 
its first dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleas- 
ant for walking — sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly 
damp from all the rife budding and sprouting. It was a 
day to further a friendship more effectually than half a dozen 
brighter ones; a day on which to speak out thoughts whici 
a June sky, the indiscreet playing of full sunlight, even the 
rustling of the breeze in the leaves, might scare, like fish, fron 
the surface. 

When they had laughingly introduced themselves to each 
other Maurice Guest’s companion talked about herself, with 
a frankness that left nothing to be desired, and impressed the 
young man at her side very agreeably. Before they had gone 
far, he knew all about her. Her name was Madeleine Wade; 
she came from a small town in Leicestershire, and, except for 
a step-brother, stood alone in the world. For several years, 
she had been a teacher in a large school near London, and 
the position was open for her to return to, when she had com- 
pleted this, the final year of her course. Then, however, she 
would devote herself exclusively to the teaching of music, and, 
with this in view, she had here taken up as many branches of 
study as she had time for. Besides piano, which was her chief 
subject, she learned singing, organ, counterpoint, and the ele- 
ments of the violin. 

“ So much is demanded nowadays,” she said in her clear 
soprano. “ And if you want to get on, it doesn’t do to be 
behindhand. Of course, it means hard work, but that is noth- 
ing to me — I am used to work and love it. Since I was 
seventeen — I am twenty-six now — I can fairly say I have never 
got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped 
and planned before me. — So you see idlers can have no place 
on my list of saints.” 

She spoke lightly, yet with a certain under-meaning. As, 
however, Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sym- 
pathetic impression, as of something strong and self-reliant — 
as he did not respond to it, she fell back on directness, and 
asked him what he had been doing when she met him, both 
on this day and the one before. 

“ I tell you candidly, I was astonished to find you there 
again,” she said. “ As a rule, new-comers are desperately 
earnest brooms.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


39 


His laugh was a trifle uneasy; and he answered evasively, not 
meaning to say much. But he had reckoned without the week 
of silence that lay behind him; it had been more of a strain 
than he knew, and his pent-up speech once set agoing could 
not be brought to a stop. An almost physical need of com- 
munication made itself felt in him; he spoke with a volubility 
that was foreign to him, began his sentences with a confi- 
dential “You see,” and said things at which he himself was 
amazed. He related impressions, not facts, and impressions 
which, until now, he had not been conscious of receiving; he 
told unguardedly of his plans and ambitions, and even went 
back and touched on his home-life, dwelling with considerable 
bitterness on the scant sympathy he had received. 

His companion looked at him curiously. She had expected 
a casual answer to her casual words, a surface frankness, such 
as she herself had shown, and, at first, she felt sceptical 
towards this unbidden confidence: she did not care for people 
who gave themselves away at a word ; either they were naive to 
foolishness or inordinately vain. But having listened for some 
time to his outpourings, she began to feel reassured ; and soon 
she understood that he was talking thus at random, merely be- 
cause he was lonely and bottled-up. Before he had finished, 
she was even a little gratified by his openness, and on his 
confiding to her what Schwarz had said to him, she smiled 
indulgently. 

“ Perhaps I took it to mean more than it actually did,” 
said Maurice apologetically. “ But anyhow it was cheering 
to hear it. You see, I must prove to the people at home that 
I was right and they were wrong. Failure was preached at 
me on every side. I was the only soul to believe in myself.” 

“And you really disliked teaching so?” 

“ Hated it with all my heart.” 

She frankly examined him. He had a pale, longish face, 
with thin lips, which might indicate either narrow prejudice 
or a fanatic tenacity. When he grew animated, he had a habit 
of opening his eyes very wide, and of staring straight before 
him. At such moments, too, he tossed back his head, with 
the impatient movements of a young horse. His hands and 
feet were good, his clothes of a provincial cut. Her fingers 
itched to retie the bow of his cravat for him, to pull him here 
and there into shape. Altogether, he made the impression 
upon her of being a very young man: when he coloured, or 
otherwise grew embarrassed, under her steady gaze, she men- 


40 


MAURICE GUEST 


tally put him down for less than twenty. But he had good 
manners; he allowed her to pass before him, where the way 
grew narrow; walked on the outside of the path; made haste 
to draw back an obstreperous branch; and not one of these 
trifling conventionalities was lost on Madeleine Wade. 

They had turned their steps homewards, and were drawing 
near the edge of the wood, when, through the tree-trunks, 
which here were bare and far apart, they saw two people 
walking arm in arm; and on turning a corner found the couple 
coming straight towards them, on the same path as them- 
selves. In the full flush of his talk, Maurice Guest did not 
at first grasp what was about to happen. He had ended the 
sentence he was at, and begun another, before the truth broke 
on him. Then he stuttered, lost the thread of his thought, was 
abruptly silent ; and what he had been going to say, and what, a 
moment before, had seemed of the utmost importance, was 
never said. His companion did not seem to notice his preoccu- 
pation; she gave an exclamation of what sounded like surprise, 
and herself looked steadily at the approaching pair. Thus they 
went forward to a meeting which the young man had imag- 
ined to himself in many ways, but not in this. The moment he 
had waited for had come; and now he wished himself miles 
away. Meanwhile, they walked on, in a brutal, matter-of-fact 
fashion, and at a fairish pace, though each step he took was an 
event, and his feet were as heavy and awkward as if they did 
not belong to him. 

The other two sauntered towards them, without haste. The 
man she was with had his arm through hers, her hand in his 
left hand, while in his right he twirled a cane. They were not 
speaking; she looked before her, rather listlessly, with dark, 
indifferent eyes. To see this, to see also that she was taller 
and broader than he had believed, and in full daylight some- 
what sallow, Maurice had first to conquer an aversion to look 
at all, on account of the open familiarity of their attitude. It 
was not like this that he had dreamt of finding her. And so it 
happened that when, without a word to him, his companion 
crossed the path and confronted the other two, he only lingered 
for an instant, in an agony of indecision, and then, by an im- 
pulse over which he had no control, walked on and stood out 
of earshot. 

He drew a deep breath, like one who has escaped a danger; 
but almost simultaneously he bit his lip with mortification: 
could any power on earth make it clear to him why he had acted 


MAURICE GUEST 


4i 


in this way? All his thoughts had been directed towards this 
moment for so long, only to take this miserable end. A string 
of contemptuous epithets for himself rose to his lips. But when 
he looked back at the group, the reason of his folly was ap- 
parent to him; at the sight of this other beside her, a sharp 
twinge of jealousy had run through him and disturbed his 
balance. He gazed ardently at her in the hope that she would 
look round, but it was only the man — he was caressing his 
slight moustache and hitting at loose stones while the girls 
talked — who turned, as if drawn by Maurice’s stare, and 
looked full at him, with studied insolence. In him, Maurice 
recognised the violinist of the concert, but he, too, was taller 
than he had believed, and much younger. A mere boy, said 
Maurice to himself; a mere boy, with a disagreeable dissipated 
face. 

Madeleine Wade came hurrying to rejoin him, apologising 
for the delay; the meeting had, however, been fortunate, as 
she had had a message from Schwarz to deliver. Maurice 
let a few seconds elapse, then asked without preamble: “Who 
is that?” 

His companion looked quickly at him, struck both by his 
tone and by his unconscious use of the singular. The air 
of indifference with which he was looking out across the 
meadow-land, told its own tale. 

“Schilsky? Don’t you know Schilsky? Our Joachim in 
spe ? ” she asked, to tease him. 

Maurice Guest coloured. “Yes, I heard him play the other 
night,” he answered in good faith. “ But I didn’t mean him. 
I meant the — the lady he was with.” 

The girl at his side laughed, not very heartily. 

“ Et tu, Brute! ” she said. “ I might have known it. It 
really is remarkable that though so many people don’t think 
Louise good-looking — I have often heard her called plain — 
yet I never knew a man go past her without turning his head. 
— You want to know who and what she is? Well, that de- 
pends on whom you ask. Schwarz would tell you she was one 
of his most gifted pupils — but no: he always says that of his 
pretty girls, and some do find her pretty, you know.” 

“ She is, indeed, very,” said Maurice with warmth. “ Though 
I think pretty is not just the word.” 

“ No, I don’t suppose it is,” said Madeleine, and this time 
there was a note of mockery in her laugh. But Maurice did 
not let himself be deterred. As it seemed likely that she was 


42 


MAURICE GUEST 


going to let the subject rest here, he persisted: “ But suppose I 
asked you — what would you say ? ” 

She gave him a shrewd side-glance. “ I think I won’t tell 
you,” she said, more gravely. “ If a man has once thought a 
girl pretty, and all the rest of it, he’s never grateful for the 
truth. If I said Louise was a baggage, or a minx, or some 
other horrid thing, you would always bear me a grudge for it, 
so please note, I don’t say it — for we are going to be friends, 
I hope?” 

“ I hope so, too,” said the young man. 

They walked some distance along the unfinished end of the 
Mozartstrasse , where only a few villas stood, in newly made 
gardens. 

“ At least, I should like to know her name — her whole name. 
You said Louise, I think?” 

She laughed outright at this. “ Her name is Dufrayer, Louise 
Dufrayer, and she has been here studying with Schwarz for 
about a year and a half now. She has some talent, but is in- 
dolent to the last degree, and only works when she can’t help it. 
Also she always has an admirer of some kind in tow. This, 
to-day, is her last particular friend. — Is that biographical matter 
enough ? ” 

He was afraid he had made himself ridiculous in her eyes, 
and did not answer. They walked the rest of the way in 
silence. At her house-door, they paused to take leave of each 
other. 

“ Good-bye. Come and see me sometimes when you have 
time. We were once colleagues, you know, and are now fellow- 
pupils. I should be glad to help you if you ever need help.” 

He thanked her and promised to remember; then walked 
home without knowing how he did it. He had room in his 
brain for one thought only; he knew her name, he knew her 
name. He said it again and again to himself, walked in time 
with it, and found it as heady as wine; the mere sound of the 
spoken syllables seemed to bring her nearer to him, to estab- 
lish a mysterious connection between them. Moreover, in itself 
it pleased him extraordinarily; and he was vaguely grateful to 
something outside himself, that it was a name he could honestly 
admire. 

In a kind of defiant challenge to unseen powers, he doubled 
his arm and felt the muscles in it. Then he sat down at his 
piano, and, to the dismay of his landlady — for it was now late 
evening — practised for a couple of hours without stopping. 


MAURICE GUEST 


43 

And the scales he sent flying up and down in the darkness had 
a ring of exultation in them, were like cries of triumph. 

He had discovered the “ Open Sesame ” to his treasure. And 
there was time and to spare. He left everything to the future, 
in blind trust that it would bring him good fortune. It was 
enough that they were here together, inhabitants of the same 
town. Besides, he had formed a friendship with some one who 
knew her ; a way would surely open up, in which he might make 
her aware of his presence. In the meantime, it was something 
to live for. Each day that dawned might be the day. 

But little by little, like a fountain run dry, his elation sub- 
sided, and, as he lay sleepless, he had a sudden fit of jealous 
despair. He remembered, with a horrid distinctness, how he 
had seen her. Again she came towards them, at the other’s 
side, hand in hand with him, inattentive to all but him. Now 
he could almost have wept at the recollection. Those clasped 
hands ! — he could have forgiven everything else, but the thought 
of these remained with him and stung him. Here he lay, 
thinking wild and foolish things, building castles that had 
no earthly foundation, and all the time it was another who had 
the right to be with her, to walk at her side, and share her 
thoughts. Again he was the outsider; behind these two was a 
life full of detail and circumstance, of which he knew nothing. 
His excited brain called up pictures, imagined fiercely at words 
and looks, until the darkness and stillness of the room became 
unendurable; and he sprang up, threw on his clothing, and 
went out. Retracing his steps, he found the very spot where 
they had met. Guiltily, with a stealthy look round him, 
though wood and night were black as ink, he knelt down and 
kissed the gravel where he thought she had stood. 


IV 


It was through Dove’s agency — Dove was always on the spot 
to guide and assist his friends; to advise where the best, or 
cheapest, or rarest, of anything was to be had, from second- 
hand Wagner scores to hair pomade; he knew those shops 
where the “ half-quarters ” of ham or roast-beef weighed 
heavier than elsewhere, restaurants where the beer had least 
froth and the cutlets were largest for the money; knew the 
ins and outs of Leipzig as no other foreigner did, knew all that 
went on, and the affairs of everybody, as though he went 
through life garnering in just those little facts that others were 
apt to overlook. Through Dove, Maurice became a paying 
guest at a dinner-table kept by two maiden ladies, who eked 
out their income by providing a plain meal, at a low price, 
for respectable young people. 

The company was made up to a large extent of English- 
speaking foreigners. There were several university students — 
grave-faced, older men, with beards and spectacles — who looked 
down on the young musicians, and talked, of set purpose, on 
abstruse subjects. More noteworthy were two American 
pianists: Ford, who could not carry a single glass of beer, and 
played better when he had had more than one; and James, a 
wiry, red-haired man, with an unfaltering opinion of himself, 
and an iron wrist — by means of a week’s practice, he could 
ruin any piano. Two ladies were also present. Philadelphia 
Jensen, of German-American parentage, was a student of voice- 
production, under a Swedish singing master who had lately set 
musical circles in a ferment, with his new and extraordinary 
method: its devotees swore that, in time, it would display mar- 
vellous results ; but, in the meantime, the most advanced 
pupils were only emitting single notes, and the greater number 
stood, every morning, before their respective mirrors, watch- 
ing their mouths open and shut, fish-fashion, without produc- 
ing a sound. Miss Jensen — she preferred the English pro- 
nunciation of the J — was a large, fleshy woman, with a curled 
fringe and prominent eyes. Her future stage-presence was the 
object of general admiration; it was whispered that she aimed 
at Isolde. Loud in voice and manner, she was fond of pro- 

44 


MAURICE GUEST 


45 


claiming her views on all kinds of subjects, from diaphragmatic 
respiration, through Ghosts , which was being read by a bold, 
advanced few, down to the continental methods of regulating 
vice — to the intense embarrassment of those who sat next her 
at table. Still another American lady, Miss Martin, was study- 
ing with Bendel, the rival of Schwarz; and as she lived in the 
same quarter of the town as Dove and Maurice, the three of 
them often walked home together. For the most part, Miss 
Martin was in a state of tragic despair. With the frankness of 
her race, she admitted that she had arrived in Leipzig, expect- 
ing to astonish. In this she had been disappointed ; Bendel had 
treated her like any other of his pupils; she was still playing 
Haydn and Czerny, and saw endless vistas of similar com- 
posers “ back of these.” Dove laid the whole blame on Bendel’s 
method — which he denounced with eloquence — and strongly 
advocated her becoming a pupil of Schwarz. He himself under- 
took to arrange matters, and, in what seemed an incredibly 
short time, the change was effected. For a little, things went 
better; Schwarz was reported to have said that she had talent, 
great talent, and that he would make something of her; but, 
soon, she was complaining anew: if there were any difference 
between Czerny and Bertini, Haydn and Dussek, some one 
might “ slick up ” and tell her what it was. Off the subject 
of her own gifts, she was a lively, affable girl, with china-blue 
eyes, pale flaxen hair, and coal-black eyebrows; and both young 
men got on well with her, in the usual superficial way. For 
Maurice Guest, she had the additional attraction, that he had 
once seen her in the street with the object of his romantic fancy. 

Since the afternoon when he had heard from Madeleine 
Wade who this was, he had not advanced a step nearer making 
■her acquaintance; though a couple of weeks had passed, though 
he now knew two people who knew her, and though his satis- 
faction at learning her name had immediately yielded to a 
hunger for more. And now, hardly a day went by, on which 
he did not see her. His infatuation had made him keen of 
scent; by following her, with due precaution, he had found out 
for himself in the Bruderstrasse, the roomy old house she lived 
in; had found out how she came and went. He knew her 
associates, knew the streets she preferred, the hour of day 
at which she was to be met at the Conservatorium. Far away, 
at the other end of one of the quiet streets that lay wide and 
sunny about the Gewandhaus, when, to other eyes she was a 
mere speck in the distance, he learned to recognise her — if only 


MAURICE GUEST 


46 

by the speed at which his heart beat — and he even gave chase 
to imaginary resemblances. Once he remained sitting in a 
tramway far beyond his destination, because he traced, in one 
of the passengers, a curious likeness to her, in long, wavy eye- 
brows that were highest in the middle of the forehead. 

Thus the pale face with the heavy eyes haunted him by day 
and by night. 

He was very happy and very unhappy, by turns — never at 
rest. If he imagined she had looked observantly at him as she 
passed, he was elated for hours after. If she did not seem to 
notice him, it was brought home to him anew that he was 
nothing to her; and once, when he had gazed too boldly, in- 
stead of turning away his eyes, as she went close by him to 
Schwarz’s room, and she had resented the look with cold 
surprise, he felt as culpable as if he had insulted her. He 
atoned for his behaviour, the next time they met, by assuming 
his very humblest air; once, too, he deliberately threw himself 
in her way, for the mere pleasure of standing aside with the 
emphatic deference of a slave. Throughout this period, and 
particularly after an occasion such as the last, his self-conscious- 
ness was so peculiarly intensified that his surroundings ceased 
to exist for him — they two were the gigantic figures on a 
shadow background — and what he sometimes could not believe 
was, that such feelings as these should be seething in him, and 
she remain ignorant of them. He lost touch with reality, and 
dreamed dreams of imperceptible threads, finer than any gos- 
samer, which could be spun from soul to soul, without the need 
of speech. 

He heaped on her all the spiritual perfections that answered 
to her appearance. And he did not, for a time, observe any- 
thing to make him waver in his faith that she was whiter, 
stiller, and more unapproachable — of a different clay, in short, 
from other women. Then, however, this illusion was shattered. 
Late one afternoon, she came down the stairs of the house she 
lived in, and, pausing at the door, looked up and down the hot, 
empty street, shading her eyes with her hand. No one was in 
sight, and she was about to turn away, when, from where he 
was watching in a neighbouring doorway, Maurice saw the 
red-haired violinist come swiftly round the corner. She saw 
him, too, took a few, quick steps towards him, and, believing 
herself unseen, looked up in his face as they met; and the 
passionate tenderness of the look, the sudden lighting of lip 
and eye, racked the poor, unwilling spy for days. To suit 


MAURICE GUEST 


47 

this abrupt descent from the pedestal, he was obliged to carve 
a new attribute to his idol, and laboriously adapt it. 

Schilsky, this insolent boy, was the thorn in his side. It 
was Schilsky she was oftenest to be met with ; he was her com- 
panion at the most unexpected hours; and, with reluctance, 
Maurice had to admit to himself that she had apparently no 
thought to spare for anyone else. But it did not make any 
difference. The curious way in which he felt towards her, the 
strange, overwhelming effect her face had on him, took no 
account of outside things. Though he might never hope for a 
word from her; though he should learn in the coming moment 
that she was the other’s promised wife; he could not for that 
reason banish her from his mind. His feelings were not to be 
put on and off, like clothes; he had no power over them. It 
was simply a case of accepting things as they were, and this 
he sought to do. 

But his imagination made it hard for him, by throwing up 
pictures in which Schilsky was all-prominent. He saw him the 
confidant of her joys and troubles; he knew their origin, knew 
what key her day was set in. If her head ached, if she were 
tired or spiritless, his hand was on her brow. The smallest 
events in her life were an open book to him; and it was these 
worthless details that Maurice Guest envied him most. He 
kept a tight hold on his fancy, but if, as sometimes happened, 
it slipped control, and painted further looks of the kind he had 
seen exchanged between them, a kiss or an embrace, he was as 
wretched as if he had in reality been present. 

At other times, this jealous unrest was not the bitterest drop 
in his cup; it was bitterer to know that she was squander- 
ing her love on one who was unworthy of it. At first, from 
a feeling of exaggerated delicacy, he had gone out of his way 
to escape hearing Schilsky ’s name; but this mood passed, and 
gave place to an undignified hankering to learn everything he 
could, concerning the young man. What he heard amounted 
to this: a talented rascal, the best violinist the Conservatorium 
had turned out for years, one to whom all gates would open; 
but — this “ but ” always followed, with a meaning smile and a 
wink of the eye: and then came the anecdotes. They had 
nothing heaven-scaling in them — these soiled love-stories; this 
perpetual impecuniosity ; this inability to refuse money, no mat- 
ter whose the hand that offered it; this fine art in the disre- 
garding of established canons — and, to Maurice Guest, bred to 
sterner standards, they seemed unspeakably low and mean. 


MAURICE GUEST 


48 

Hours came when he strove in vain to understand her. 
Ignorant of these things she could not be; was it within the 
limits of the possible that she could overlook them? — and he 
shivered lest he should be forced to think less highly of her. 
Ultimately, sending his mind back over what he had read and 
heard, drawing on his own slight experience, he came to a com- 
promise with himself. He said that most often the best and 
fairest women loved men who were unworthy of them. Was 
it not a weakness and a strength of her sex to see good where 
no good was? — a kind of divine frailty, a wilful blindness, a 
sweet inability to discern. 

At times, again, he felt almost content that Schilsky was 
what he was. If the day should ever come when, all barriers 
down, he, Maurice Guest, might be intimately associated with 
her life; if he should ever have the chance of proving to her 
what real love was, what a holy mystic thing, how far removed 
from a blind passing fancy; if he might serve her, be her slave, 
lay his hands under her feet, lead her up and on, all suffused 
in a sunset of tenderness: then, she would see that what she had 
believed to be love had been nothing but a fata Morgana , a 
mirage of the skies. And he heard himself whispering words 
of incredible fondness to her, saw her listening with wonder 
in her eyes. 

At still other moments, he was ready to renounce every hope, 
if, by doing so, he could add jot or tittle to her happiness. 

The further he spun himself into his dreams, however, and 
the better he learnt to know her in imagination, the harder 
it grew to take the first step towards realising his wishes. In 
those few, brief days, when he hugged her name to him as a 
talisman, he waited cheerfully for something to happen, some- 
thing unusual, that would bring him to her notice — a dropped 
handkerchief, a seat vacated for her at a concert, even a timely 
accident. But as day after day went by, in eventless monotony, 
he began to cast about him for human aid. From Dove, his 
daily companion, Dove of the outstretched paws of continual 
help, he now shrank away. Miss Martin was not to be spoken 
to except in Dove’s company. There was only one person who 
could assist him, if she would, and that was Madeleine Wade. 
He called to mind the hearty invitation she had given him, and 
reproached himself for not having taken advantage of it. 

One afternoon, towards six o’clock, he rang the bell of her 
lodgings in the Mozartstrasse. This was a new street, the 
first blocks of which gave directly on the Gewandhaus square; 


MAURICE GUEST 


49 


but, at the further end, where she lived, a phalanx of red- 
brick and stucco fronts looked primly across at a similar line. 
In the third storey of one of these houses, Madeleine Wade had 
a single, large room, the furniture of which was so skilfully con- 
trived, that, by day, all traces of the room’s double calling were 
obliterated. 

As he entered, on this first occasion, she was practising at a 
grand piano which stood before one of the windows. She 
rose at once, and, having greeted him warmly, made him sit 
down among the comfortable cushions that lined the sofa. 
Then she took cups and saucers from a cupboard in the wall, 
and prepared tea over a spirit-lamp. He soon felt quite at home 
with her, and enjoyed himself so well that many such informal 
visits followed. 

But the fact was not to be denied: it was her surroundings 
that attracted him, rather than she herself. True, he found 
her frankness delightfully “ refreshing,” and when he spoke of 
her, it was as of an “ awfully good sort,” “ a first-class girl ”; 
for Madeleine was invariably lively, kind and helpful. At the 
same time, she was without doubt a trifle too composed, too 
sure of herself; she had too keen an eye for human foibles; she 
came towards you with a perfectly natural openness, and she 
came all the way — there was nothing left for you to explore. 
And when not actually with her, it was easy to forget her; 
there was never a look or a smile, never a barbed word, never a 
sudden spontaneous gesture — the vivid translation of a thought 
— to stamp itself on your memory. 

But it was only at the outset that he thought things like 
these. Madeleine Wade had been through experiences of the 
same kind before; and hardly a fortnight later they were call- 
ing each other by their Christian names. 

When he came to her, towards evening, tired and inclined 
to be lonely, she seated him in a corner of the sofa, and did 
not ask him to say much until she had made the tea. Then, 
when the cups were steaming in front of them, she discussed 
sympathetically with him the progress of his work. She ques- 
tioned him, too, about his home and family, and he read her 
parts of his mother’s letters, which arrived without fail every 
Tuesday morning. She also drew from him a more detailed 
account of his previous life; and, in this connection, they had 
several animated discussions about teaching, a calling to which 
Madeleine looked composedly forward to returning, while 
Maurice, in strong superlative, declared he had rather force 


50 


MAURICE GUEST 


a flock of sheep to walk in line. She told him, too, some of 
the gossip the musical quarter of the town was rife with, about 
those in high places; and, in particular, of the bitter rivalry 
that had grown up with the years between Schwarz and Bendel, 
the chief masters of the piano. If these two met in the street, 
they passed each other with a stony stare; if, at an Abendunter- 
haltung, a pupil of one was to play, the other rose ostentatiously 
and left the hall. She also hinted that in order to obtain all 
you wanted at the Conservatorium, to be favoured above your 
fellows, it -was only necessary flagrantly to bribe one of the 
clerks, Kleefeld by name, who was open to receive anything, 
being wretchedly impecunious and the father of a large family. 

Finding, too, that Maurice was bent on learning German, 
she, who spoke the language fluently, proposed that they should 
read it together; and soon it became their custom to work 
through a few pages of Quintus Fixlein, a scene or two of 
Schiller, some lyrics of Heine. They also began to play duets, 
symphonies old and new, and Madeleine took care constantly 
to have something fresh and interesting at hand. To all this 
the young man brought an unbounded zeal, and, if he had had 
his way, they would have gone on playing or reading far 
into the evening. 

She smiled at his eagerness. “ You absorb like a sponge.” 

When it grew too dark to see, he confided to her that his 
dearest wish was to be a conductor. He was not yet clear 
how it could be managed, but he was sure that this was the 
branch of his art for which he had most aptitude. 

Here she interrupted him. “ Do you never write verses? ” 

Her question seemed to him so meaningless that he only 
laughed, and went on with what he was saying. For the event 
of his plan proving impracticable — at home they had no idea 
of. it — he was training as a concert-player ; but he intended to 
miss no chance that offered, of learning how to handle an 
orchestra. 

Throughout these hours of stimulating companionship, how- 
ever, he did not lose sight of his original purpose in going to 
see Madeleine. It was only that just the right moment never 
seemed to come; and the name he was so anxious to hear, had 
not once been mentioned between them. Often, in the dusk, 
his lips twitched to speak it; but he feared his own awkward- 
ness, and her quick tongue; then, too, the subject was usually 
far aside from what they were talking of, and it would have 
made a ludicrous impression to drag it in by the hair. 


MAURICE GUEST 


5i 


But one day his patience was rewarded. He had carelessly 
taken up a paper-bound volume of Chopin, and was on the 
point of commenting upon it, for he had lately begun to under- 
stand the difference between a Litolff and a Mikuli. But it 
slipped from his hand, and he was obliged to crawl under the 
piano to pick it up; on a corner of the cover, in a big, black, 
scrawly writing, was the name of Marie Louise Dufrayer. He 
cleared his throat, laid the volume down, took it up again ; then, 
realising that the moment had come, he put a bold face on 
the matter. 

“ I see this belongs to Miss Dufrayer,” he said bluntly, and, 
as his companion’s answer was only a careless: “Yes, Louise 
forgot it the last time she was here,” he went on without delay: 
“ I should like to know Miss Dufrayer, Madeleine. Do you 
think you could introduce me to her?” 

Madeleine, who was in the act of taking down a book from 
her hanging shelves, turned and looked at him. He was still 
red in the face, from the exertion of stooping. 

“Introduce you tQ Louise?” she queried. “Why? — why 
do you want to be introduced to her? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. For no particular reason.” 

She sat down at the table, opened the book, and turned the 
leaves. 

“ Oh well, I daresay I can, if you wish it, and an opportunity 
occurs — if you’re with me some day when I meet her. — Now 
shall we go on with the Jungfrau f We were beginning the 
third act, I think. Here it is: 

Wir waren Herzensbriider, Waffenfreunde, 

Fur eine Sache hoben wir den Arm! ” 

But Maurice did not take the book she handed him across 
the table. 

“ Won’t you give me a more definite promise than that? ” 

Madeleine sat back in her chair, and, folding her arms, looked 
thoughtfully at him. 

Only a momentary silence followed his words, but, in this 
fraction of time, a series of impressions swept through her 
brain, with the continuity of a bird’s flight. It was clear to 
her at once, that what prompted his insistence was not an 
ordinary curiosity, or a passing whim; in a flash, she under- 
stood that here, below the surface, something was at work in 
him, the existence of which she had not even suspected. She 


52 


MAURICE GUEST 


was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish obtuse- 
ness; she had had these experiences before, and then, as now, 
the object of her interest had invariably been turned aside by 
the first pretty, silly face that came his way. The main dif- 
ference w T as that she had been more than ordinarily drawn to 
Maurice Guest; and, believing it impossible, in this case, for 
anyone else to be sharing the field with her, she had over-in- 
dulged the hope that he sought her out for herself alone. 

She endeavoured to learn more. But this time Maurice was 
on his guard, and the questions she put, straight though they 
were, only elicited the response that he had seen Miss Dufrayer 
shortly after arriving, and had been much struck by her. 

Madeleine’s brain travelled rapidly backwards. “ But if I 
remember rightly, Maurice, we met Louise one day in the 
Scheibenholz , the first time we went for a walk together. Why 
didn’t you stop then, and be introduced to her, if you were so 
anxious ? ” 

“ Why do we ever do foolish things? ” 

Her amazement was so patent that he made uncomfortable 
apology for himself. “ It is ridiculous, I know,” he said and 
coloured. “ And it must seem doubly so to you. But that I 
should want to know her — there’s nothing strange in that, is 
there? You, too, Madeleine, have surely admired people some- 
times — some one, say, who has done a fine thing — and have felt 
that you must know them personally, at all costs? ” 

“ Perhaps I have. But romantic feelings of that kind are 
sure to end in smoke. As a rule they’ve no foundation but 
our own wishes. — If you take my advice, Maurice, you w T ill be 
content to admire Louise at a distance. Think her as pretty 
as you like, and imagine her to be all that’s sweet and charm- 
ing; but never mind about knowing her.” 

“ But why on earth not? ” 

“ Why, nothing will come of it.” 

“ That depends on what you mean by nothing.” 

“ You don’t understand. I must be plainer. — Do sit down, 
and don’t fidget so. — How long have you been here now? 
Nearly two months. Well, that’s long enough to know some- 
thing of w T hat’s going on. You must have both seen and heard 
that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certain person, to put 
it bluntly, that she is wrapped up in Schilsky. This has been 
going on for over a year now, and she seems to grow more in- 
fatuated every day. When she first came to Leipzig, we were 
friends; she lived in this neighbourhood, and I was able to be 


MAURICE GUEST 


53 

of service to her. Now, weeks go by and I don’t see her; 
she has broken with every one — for Louise is not a girl to do 
things by halves. — Introduce you? Of course I can. But sup- 
pose it done, with all pomp and ceremony, what will you get 
from it? I know Louise. A word or two, if her ladyship is 
in the mood ; if not, you will be so much thin air for her. And 
after that, a nod if she meets you in the street — and that’s all.” 

“ It’s enough.” 

“ You’re easily satisfied. — But tell me, honestly now, Mau- 
rice, what possible good can that do you ? ” 

He moved aimlessly about the room. “ Good? Must one 
always look for good in everything? — I can see quite well that 
from your point of view the whole thing must seem absurd. 
I expect nothing whatever from it, but I’m going to know her, 
and that’s all about it.” 

Still in the same position, with folded arms, Madeleine ob- 
served him with unblinking eyes. 

“And you won’t bear me a grudge, if things go badly? — 
I mean if you are disappointed, or dissatisfied ? ” 

He made a gesture of impatience. 

“ Yes, but I know Louise, and you don’t.” 

He had picked up from the writing-table the photograph of 
a curate, and he stared at it as if he had no thought but to let 
the mild features stamp themselves on his mind. Madeleine’s 
eyes continued to bore him through. At last, out of a silence, 
she said slowly: “ Of course I can introduce you — it’s done with 
a wave of the hand. But, as your friend, I think it only right 
to warn you what you must expect. For I can see you don’t 
understand in the least, and are laying up a big disappointment 
for yourself. However, you shall have your way — if only to 
show you that I am right.” 

“ Thanks, Madeleine — thanks awfully.” 

They settled down to read Schiller. But Maurice made one 
slip after another, and she let them pass uncorrected. She was 
annoyed with herself afresh, for having made too much of the 
matter, for having blown it up to a fictitious importance, when 
the wiser way would have been to treat it as of no conse- 
quence at all. 

The next afternoon he arrived, with expectation in his face; 
but not on this day, nor the next, nor the next again, did she 
bring the subject up between them. On the fourth, however, 
as he was leaving, she said abruptly: “You must have patience 
for a little, Maurice. Louise has gone to Dresden.” 


54 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ That’s why the blinds are down,” he exclaimed without 
thinking, then coloured furiously at his own words, and, to 
smooth them over, asked: “Why has she gone? For how 
long? ” 

But Madeleine caught him up. “ Sieh da, some one has been 
playing sentinel! ” she said in raillery; and it seemed to him 
that every fold in his brain was laid bare to her, before she 
answered: “ She has gone for a week or ten days — to visit some 
friends who are staying there.” 

He nodded, and was about to open the door, when she added : 
“ But set your mind at rest — he is here.” 

Maurice looked sharply up; but a minute or two passed be- 
fore the true meaning of her words broke on him. He coloured 
again — a mortifying habit he had not outgrown, and one which 
seemed to affect him more in the presence of Madeleine than of 
anyone else. 

“ It’s hardly a thing to joke about.” 

“Joke! — who is joking?” she asked, and raised her eye- 
brows so high that her forehead was filled with wrinkles. 
“ Nothing was further from my thoughts.” 

Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the door- 
handle. Then, following an impulse, he turned and sat down 
again. “ Madeleine, tell me — I wouldn’t ask anyone but you — 
what sort of a fellow is this Schilsky ? ” 

“ What sort of a fellow? ” She laughed sarcastically. “ To 
be quite truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned 
out for years.” 

“ Now you’re joking again. As if I didn’t know that. 
Everyone says the same.” 

“ You want his moral character? Well, I’ll be equally can- 
did. Or, at least, I’ll give you my opinion of him. It’s an- 
other superlative. Just as I consider him the best violinist, I 
also hold him to be the greatest scamp in the place — and I’ve 
no objection to use a stronger word if you like. I wouldn’t 
take his hand, no, not if he offered it to me. The last time 
he was in this room, about six months ago, he — well, let us 
say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that 
were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it’s a fact,” she 
repeated, complacently eyeing Maurice’s dismay. “Otherwise? 
— oh, otherwise, he was born, I think, with a silver spoon in 
his mouth. He has one piece of luck after another. Zeppelin 
discovered him ten years ago, on a concert-tour — his father is 
a smith in Warsaw — and brought him to Leipzig. He was a 


MAURICE GUEST 


55 


prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up, and paid 
for his education ; and when he washed his hands of him in dis- 
gust, Schaefele’s wife — Schaefele is head of the Handelverein, 
you know — adopted him as a son — some people say as more 
than a son, for, though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly 
crazy over him, and behaved as foolishly as any of the dozens 
of silly girls who have lost their hearts to him.” 

“ I suppose they are engaged,” said Maurice after a pause, 
speaking out of his own thoughts. 

“ Do you? ” she asked with mild humour. “ I really never 
asked them. — But this is just another example of his good 
fortune. When he has worn out every one else’s patience, 
through his dishonest extravagance, he picks up a rich wife, 
who is not averse to supporting him before marriage.” 

Maurice looked at her reproachfully. “ I wonder you care 
to repeat such gossip.” 

“ It’s not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise 
makes no mystery of her doings — doesn’t care that much what 
people say. While as for him — well, it’s enough to know it’s 
Schilsky. The thing is an open secret. Listen, now, and I’ll 
tell you how it began — just to let you judge for yourself what 
kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise, and how 
Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a 
pair think a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. 
When Louise came here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was 
away somewhere with Zeppelin, and didn’t get back till a 
couple of months afterwards. As I said, I knew Louise pretty 
well at that time; she had got herself into trouble with — but 
that’s neither here nor there. Well, my lord returns — he him- 
self tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening, and a 
Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in 
late, and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, 
just before him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he 
couldn’t take his eyes off her — others who were by say, too, he 
seemed perfectly fascinated. No one can stare as rudely as 
Schilsky, and he ended by making her so uncomfortable that she 
couldn’t bear it any longer, and went out of the hall. He after 
her, and it didn’t take him an hour to find out all about her. 
The next evening, at an Abend , they were both there again — 
it was just like Louise to go! — and the same thing was repeated. 
She left again before it was over, he followed, and this time 
found her in one of the side corridors; and there — mind you, 
without a single word having passed between them! — he took 


MAURICE GUEST 


56 

her in his arms and kissed her, kissed her soundly, half a dozen 
times — though they had never once spoken to each other: he 
boasts of it to this day. That same evening ” 

“ Don’t, Madeleine — please, don’t say any more! I don’t 
care to hear it,” broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots 
of his hair, at some ’points of resemblance to his own case, then 
grown pale again, and now he waved his arm meaning- 

lessly in the air. “ He is a scoundrel, a — a ” But he 

recognised that he could not condemn one without the other, 
and stopped short. 

“ My dear boy, if I don’t tell you, other people will. And 
at least you know I mean well by you. Besides,” she went on, 
not without a touch of malice as she eyed him sitting there, 
spoiling the leaves of a book. “ Besides, I may as well show you 
how you have to treat Louise, if you want to make an impres- 
sion on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what of her? Be- 
lieve me, Maurice,” she said more seriously, “ Louise is not 
a whit too good for him ; they were made for each other. And 
of course he will marry her eventually, for the sake of her 
money ” — here she paused and looked deliberately at him — 
“ if not for her own.” 

This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words. 

“ Madeleine! ” 

He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted. 

But Madeleine did not falter. “ I told you already, you 
know, that Louise doesn’t care what is said about her. As 
soon as this unfortunate affair began, she threw up the rooms 
she was in at the time, and moved nearer the Talstrasse — where 
he lives. Rumour has it also that she provided herself with 
an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and deaf when 
necessary.” 

“ How can you repeat such atrocious scandal ? ” 

He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were 
so many arrows, the points of which remained sticking in him. 

She shrugged her shoulders. “Your not believing it doesn’t 
affect the truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the 
place when it happened. And you may despise rumour as you 
will, my experience is, a report never springs up that hasn’t 
some basis of fact to go on — however small.” 

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that 
came to his lips ; of what use was it to make himself still more 
ridiculous in her eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he 
picked it up, and brushed it on his sleeve, without knowing 


MAURICE GUEST 


57 


what he did. “ Oh, well, of course, if you think that,” he 
said as coolly as he was able, “ nothing I could say would 
make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, I sup- 
pose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine ” — he grew hot 
in spite of himself. “You have been her friend, you say; you 
have known her intimately; and yet just because she . . . 
she cares for this fellow in such a way that she sets caring for 
him above being cautious — why, not one woman in a thousand 
would have the courage for that sort of thing! It needs 
courage, not to mind what people — no, what your friends — ■ 
imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, 
one has only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face 
and — I don’t know her, Madeleine; I’ve never spoken to her, 
and never may, yet I am absolutely certain that what is said 
about her isn’t true. So certain that — But after all, if this 
is what you think about . . . about it, then all I have to say is, 
we had better not discuss the subject again. It does no 
good, and we should never be of the same opinion.” 

Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, 
he turned to the door. But Madeleine was not in the least 
angry. She gave him her hand, and said, with a smile, yet 
gravely, too: “Agreed, Maurice! We will not speak of 
Louise again.” 


V 


He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose 
and unhappy, and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging 
tongues. For the first time in his life he had come into touch 
with slander, that invisible Hydra, and straightway it seized 
upon the one person to whom he was not indifferent. In this 
mood it was a relief to him that certain three windows in the 
Briiderstrasse remained closed and shuttered; with the load of 
malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to see 
her; he must first accustom himself to it, as to the scar left by 
a wound. 

He did not, of course, believe what Madeleine, with her 
infernal frankness, had told him; but the knowledge that such 
a report was abroad, depressed him unspeakably: it took colour 
from the sky and light from the sun. Sometimes in these days, 
as he sat at his piano, he had a sudden fit of discouragement, 
which made it seem not worth while to continue playing. It 
was unthinkable that she could be aware how busy scandal was 
with her name, and how her careless acts were spied on and 
misrepresented ; and he turned over in his mind ways and means 
by which she might be induced to take more thought for herself 
in future. 

He did not believe it; but hours of distracting uncertainty 
came, none the less, when small things which his memory had 
stored up made him go so far as to ask himself, what if it should 
be true? — what then? But he had not courage enough to face 
an answer ; he put the possibility away from him, in the extreme 
background of his mind, refused to let his brain piece its ob- 
servations together. The mere suspicion was a blasphemy, a 
blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweet pale 
face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus 
would guilt have shown itself. 

Schilsky, who was the origin of all the evil, he made wide 
circuits to avoid. He thought of him, at this time, with what 
he believed to be a feeling of purely personal antipathy. In his 
most downcast moments, he had swift and foolish visions of 
publicly executing vengeance on him ; but if, a moment later, he 
saw the violinist’s red hair or big hat before him in the street, 

58 


MAURICE GUEST 


59 


he turned aside as though the other had been plague-struck. 
Once, however, when he was going up the steps of the Con- 
servatorium, and Schilsky, in leaping down, pushed carelessly 
against him, he returned the knock so rudely and swore with 
such downrightness that, in spite of his hurry, Schilsky stopped 
and fixed him, and with equal vehemence damned him for a 
fool of an Englishman. 

His despondency spread like a weed. A furious impatience 
overcame him, too, at the thought of the innumerable hours he 
would be forced to spend at the piano, day in, day out, for 
months to come, before the result could be compared with the 
achievements even of many a fellow-student. As the private 
lessons Schwarz gave were too expensive for him, he decided, as 
a compromise, to take a course of extra lessons with Fiirst, who 
prepared pupils for the master, and was quite willing to come 
to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could get. 

Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice 
climbed the steep, winding stair of the house in the Brandvor- 
werkstrasse where Fiirst lived with his mother. It was so dark 
on this stair that, in dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all 
day long on the different landings. To its convolutions, in its 
unaired corners, clung what seemed to be the stale, accumulated 
smells of years; and these were continually reinforced; since 
every day at dinner-time, the various kitchen-windows, all of 
which gave on the stair, were opened to let the piercing odours 
of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its kind 
in this relatively new street, was divided into countless small 
lodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on 
each storey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the 
same number of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third 
storey was occupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the 
Fiirsts above waged perpetual war, one of those petty, unending 
wars that can only arise and be kept up when, as here, such 
heterogeneous elements are forced to live side by side, under one 
roof. The fancier, although his business was nominally in the 
town, had enough of his wares beside him to make his house 
a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife dated back to 
a day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter, the 
Fiirsts’ lean cat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him, 
enchanted ground, and, according to the fancier, had caused the 
death, from fright, of a delicate canary, although the culprit 
had done nothing more than sit before the cage, licking his 
lips. This had happened several years ago, but each party was 


6o 


MAURICE GUEST 


still fertile in planning annoyances for the other, and the fe- 
males did not bow when they met. On the fourth floor, next 
the Fiirsts, lived a pale, harassed teacher, with a family which 
had long since outgrown its accommodation ; for the wife was 
perpetually in childbed, and cots and cradles were the chief 
furniture of the house. As the critical moments of her career 
drew nigh, the “ Frau Lehrer ” complained, with an aggravated 
bitterness, of the unceasing music that went on behind the thin 
partition; and this grievance, together with the racy items of 
gossip left behind the midwife’s annual visit, like a trail of 
smoke, provided her and Fiirst’s mother with infinite food for 
talk. They were thick friends again a few minutes after a 
scene so lively that blows seemed imminent, and they met every 
morning on the landing, where, with broom or child in hand, 
they stood gossiping by the hour. 

When Maurice rang, Frau Fiirst opened the door to him 
herself, having first cautiously examined him through the 
kitchen window. Drying her hands on her apron, she ushered 
him through the tiny entry — a place of dangers, pitch-dark as 
it was, and lumbered with chests and presses — into Franz’s 
room, the “ best room ” of the house. Here were collected a 
red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Fiirst’s heart, and 
all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too, stood 
the well-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of 
music-stands, a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For 
years, assuredly, the windows had never been thrown wide 
open; the odours of stale coffee and forgotten dinners, of stove 
and warmed wood, of piano, music and beeswax: all these lay 
as it were in streaks in the atmosphere, and made it heavy and 
thought-benumbing. 

A willing listener was worth more than gold to Frau Fiirst, 
and here, the first time he came, while waiting for Franz, 
Maurice heard in detail the history of the family. The father 
had been an oboist in the Gewandhaus orchestra, and had died, 
a few years previously, of a chill incurred after a performance 
of Die Meister singer. At his death, it had fallen on Franz 
to support the family; and, thanks to Schwarz’s aid and in- 
fluence, Franz was able to get as many pupils as he had time to 
teach. It was easy to see that this, her eldest son, was the apple 
of Frau Fiirst’s eye; her other children seemed to be there only 
to meet his needs; his lightest wish was law. Each additional 
pupil that sought him out, was a fresh tribute to his genius; 
each one that left him, no matter after how long, was unthank- 


MAURICE GUEST 


61 


ful and a traitor. For the nights on which his quartet met at 
the house, she prepared as another woman would for a per- 
sonal fete; and she watched the candles grow shorter without 
a tinge of regret. When Franz played at an Abendunter- 
haltung , the family turned out in a body. Schwarz was a 
god, all-powerful, on whom their welfare depended ; and it was 
necessary to propitiate him by a quarterly visit on a Sunday 
morning, when, over wine and biscuits, she wept real and 
feigned tears of gratitude. 

In this hard-working, careworn woman, who was seldom to 
be seen but in petticoat, bed-jacket, and heelless, felt shoes; 
who, her whole life long, had been little better than a domestic 
servant ; in her there existed a devotion to art which had never 
wavered. It would have seemed to her contrary to nature that 
Franz should be anything but a musician, and it was also quite 
in the order of things for them to be poor. Two younger boys, 
who were still at school, gave up all their leisure time to music 
— they had never in their lives tumbled round a football or 
swung a bat — and Franz believed that the elder would prove a 
skilful violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and 
a good ear, and was to be a singer — for before this Juggernaut, 
prejudice went down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Fiirst 
that her daughter should be a clerk, even a teacher, she would 
have flung up hands of horror ; but music ! — that was a different 
matter. It was, moreover, the single one of the arts, in which 
this staunch advocate of womanliness granted her sex a share. 

“ Ask Franz,” she said to Maurice. “ Franz knows. He 
will explain. All women can do is to reproduce what some one 
else has thought or felt.” 

As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she in- 
variably fell back on Clara Schumann, with whom she had 
more than once come into personal contact. In her youth, Frau 
Fiirst had had a clear soprano voice, and, to Maurice’s in- 
terest, she told him how she had sometimes been sent for to 
the Schumann’s house in the Inselstrasse , to sing Robert’s songs 
for him. 

“ Clara accompanied me,” she said, relating this, the great 
reminiscence of her life ; “ and he was there, too, although I 
never saw him face to face. He was too shy for that. But 
he was behind a screen, and sometimes he would call : ‘ I must 
alter that ; it is too high ; ’ or ‘ Quicker, quicker ! ’ Sometimes 
even ‘ Bravo! ’ ” 

Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of 


62 MAURICE GUEST 

the few diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre 
— when Franz had tickets given to him; when one of her 
favourite operas was performed; or on the anniversary of her 
husband’s death — and, on such occasions, she pointed out to 
the younger children, the links that bound and would yet bind 
them to the great house. 

“ That was your father’s seat,” she reminded them every 
time. “ The second row from the end. He came in at the door 
to the left. And that,” pointing to the conductor’s raised chair, 
“ is where Franz will sit some day.” For she dreamed of 
Franz in all the glory of Kapellmeister; saw him swinging the 
little stick that dominated the theatre — audience, singers and 
players alike. 

And the children, hanging over the high gallery, shuffling 
their restless feet, thus had their path as clearly traced for them, 
their destiny as surely sealed, as any fate-shackled heroes of 
antiquity. 

* * # * * 

Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been 
found together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the 
latter’s lodging in the Talstrasse. He was astride a chair, over 
the back of which he had folded his arms; and his chubby, 
rubicund face glistened with moisture. 

In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table 
that was piled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat 
improving and correcting the tails and bodies of hastily made 
notes. He was still in his nightshirt, over which he had thrown 
coat and trousers; and, wide open at the neck, it exposed to 
the waist a skin of the dead whiteness peculiar to red-haired 
people. His face, on the other hand, was sallow and unfresh; 
and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarsely self-indulgent 
mouth, contrasted strikingly with the general youthfulness of 
his appearance. He had the true musician’s head: round as a 
cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft 
fluffy hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes, 
were either desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never 
normally attentive or at rest; his blunted nose and chin were 
so short as to make the face look top-heavy. A carefully tended 
young moustache stood straight out along his cheeks. He had 
large, slender hands, and quick movements. 

The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all 
three puffed hard at cigarettes. Without removing his from 


MAURICE GUEST 


63 

between his teeth, Schilsky related an adventure of the night 
before. He spoke in jerks, with a strong lisp, and was more 
intent on what he was doing than on what he was saying. 

“ Do you think he’d budge?” he asked in a thick, spluttery 
way. “ Not he. Till nearly two. And then I couldn’t get 
him along. He thought it wasn’t eleven, and wanted to re- 
lieve himself at every corner. To irritate an imaginary bobby. 
He disputed with them, too. Heavens, what sport it was! 
At last I dragged him up here and got him on the sofa. Off 
he rolls again. So I let him lie. He didn’t disturb me.” 

Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode, lay on the short, 
uncomfortable sofa, with the table-cover for a blanket. In 
answer to Schilsky, he said faintly, without opening his eyes: 
“Nothing would. You are an ox. When I wake this morn- 
ing, with a mouth like gum arabic, he sits there as if he had 
not stirred all night. Then to bed, and snores till midday, 
through all the hellish light and noise.” 

Here Fiirst could not resist making a little joke. He an- 
nounced himself by a chuckle — like the click of a clock about 
to strike. 

“ He’s got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn’t often 
get off duty. We know, we know.” He laughed tonelessly, 
and winked at Krafft. 

Krafft quoted: 

In der Woche zwier — 

“ Now, you fellows, shut up! ” said Schilsky. It was plain 
that banter of this kind was not disagreeable to him; at the 
same time he was just at the moment too engrossed, to have 
more than half an ear for what was said. With his short-sighted 
eyes close to the paper, he was listening with all his might to 
some harmonies that his fingers played on the table. When, a 
few minutes later, he rose and stretched the stiffness from his 
limbs, his face, having lost its expression of rapt concentration, 
seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set about dressing 
himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a word 
from him, Fiirst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. 
Heinrich Krafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; 
and the look he had for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a 
cat’s. 

Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules — he was narrow in pro- 
portion to his height — and still naked to the waist, took some 
bottles from a long line of washes and perfumes that stood on 


MAURICE GUEST 


64 

the washstand, and, crossing to an elegant Venetian-glass mir- 
ror, hung beside the window, lathered his chin. It was a pe- 
culiarity of his only to be able to attend thoroughly to one thing 
at a time, and a string of witticisms uttered by Fiirst passed 
unheeded. But Krafft’s first words made him start. 

Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly: 
“ I say, old fellow, are you sure it’s all square about Lulu and 
this Dresden business ? ” 

Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As 
he did so, he coloured, and answered with an over-anxious 
haste : 

“ Of course I am. I made her go. She didn’t want to.” 

“ That’s a well-known trick.” 

The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. u Do 
you think I’m not up to their tricks? Do you want to 
teach me how to manage a woman? I tell you I sent her 
away.” 

He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. “ Well, 
if you won’t believe me,” he said, with sudden anger, though 
neither of the others had spoken. u Now where the deuce is 
that letter? ” 

He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in 
chaotic drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the 
washstand ; between door and stove, through a kind of rubbish- 
heap that had formed with time, of articles of dress, spoiled 
sheets of music-paper, soiled linen, empty bottles, and boots, 
countless boots, single and in pairs. When he had found what 
he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, as if he were 
going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind ; 
a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter 
to Krafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Fiirst leaned 
over the end of the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, 
scrawly hand, and ran, without date or heading: 

My own dearest 

Now only four days more — I count them morning and night . 
J am good for nothing — my thoughts are always with you. 
Yesterday at the Gallery I sat alone in the room where the 
Madonna is, pretending enthusiasm — while the rest went to 
Holbein — and read your letter over and over again. But it 
made me a little unhappy too, for I soon found out that you 
had written it at three different times. Is it really so hard 
to write to Lulu? 


MAURICE GUEST 


65 

Have you worked better for want of interruption f — my 
damned interruptions , as you called them last week when you 
were so angry with me. Shall you have a great deal to show 
me when I come home ? No — dont say you will — or I shall 
hate Zarathustra more than I do already. 

And now only till Friday. This time you will meet me — 
yes? — and not come to the station an hour late , as you said you 
did last time. If you are not there — I warn you — I shall throw 
myself under the train. I am writing to Griinhut. Get flowers 
— there is money in one of the vases on the writing-table. Oh, 
if you only will, we shall have such a happy evening — if only 
you will. And I shall never leave you again, never again. 

Your own loving 

L. 

Fiirst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling 
through the first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, 
who had gone on dressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends — 
particularly on Krafft. 

“ Well? ” he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down. 

Krafft was silent, but Fiirst kissed his finger-tips to a large, 
hanging photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious 
on the subject of dark, sallow women. 

“And you, Heinz? What do you say? ” demanded Schilsky 
with growing impatience. 

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a 
violent irritation. 

“Why the devil can’t you open your mouth? What’s the 
matter with you? Have you anything like that to show — you 
Joseph, you ? ” 

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and 
trail on the floor. “ The letters were burned, dear boy — when 
you appeared.” He closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to re- 
member something. But a moment later, he fixed Schilsky 
sharply, and asked: “You want my opinion, do you?” 

“ Of course I do,” said Schilsky, and flung things about the 
room. 

“ Lulu,” said Krafft with deliberation, “ Lulu is getting you 
under her thumb.” 

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he 
had been vainly trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle 
that protruded from the rubbish-heap. 

“ Me? Me under her thumb? ” he spluttered — his lips be- 


66 


MAURICE GUEST 


came more marked under excitement. “ I should like to see 
her try it. You don’t know me. You don’t know Lulu. 
I am her master, I tell you. She can’t call her soul her 
own.” 

“ And yet,” said Krafft, unmoved, “ it’s a fact all the 
same.” 

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such 
a degree of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. 
His anger redoubled. “ Is it my fault that she acts like a 
wet-nurse? Is that what you call being under her thumb?” 
he cried. 

Fiirst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. “ You’re 
a lucky dog, old fellow, and you know you are. We all know 
it — in spite of occasional tantaras. But you would be still 
luckier if you took a friend’s sound advice and got you to the 
registrar. Ten minutes before the registrar, and everything 
would be different. Then she might play up as she liked; you 
would be master in earnest.” 

“Registrar?” echoed Krafft with deep scorn. “Listen to 
the ape! Not if we can hinder it. When he’s fool enough 
for that — I know him — it will be with something fresher and 
less faded, something with the bloom still on it.” 

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age — 
she was eight years older than he — was one of his sorest points. 

“ Oh, come on, now,” said Fiirst as he poured out the coffee. 
“ That’s hardly fair. She’s not so young as she might be, 
it’s true, but no one can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is 
Lulu.” 

“ Ten minutes before the registrar,” continued Krafft, medi- 
tatively shaking his head. “ And for the rest of life, chains. 
And convention. And security, which stales. And custom, 
which satiates. Oh no, I am not for matrimony! ” 

Schilsky ’s ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laugh- 
ter. “Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why,” he 
cried, throwing a brush at his friend. “ Or go to the devil — 
where you’re at home.” . 

Krafft warded off the brush. “ Look here,” he said, “ con- 
fess. Have you kissed another girl for months? Have you had 
a single billet-doux? ” 

But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished 
laughing, he said with emphasis : “ But after Lulu, they are 
all tame. Lulu is Lulu, and that’s the beginning and end of 
the matter.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


67 

“Exactly my opinion,” said Fiirst. “And yet, boys, if I 
wanted to make your mouths water, I could.” He closed one 
eye and smacked his lips. “ I know of something — something 
young and blond . . . and dimpled . . . and round, round as 
a feather-pillow ” — he made descriptive movements of the hand 
— “ with a neck, boys, a neck, I say — ♦ — ” Here, in sheer ecstasy, 
he stuck fast, and could get no further. 

Schilsky roared anew. “ He knows ot something ... so 
he does,” he cried Fiirst’s pronounced tastes were a stand- 
ing joke among them. “ Show her to us, old man, show her 

to us! Where are you hiding her? If she’s under eighteen, 

she’ll do — under eighteen, mind you, not a day over. Come 
along, I’m on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph! ” 

He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around 
him, like a god from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a 

loosely knotted, bright blue tie, with floating ends and con- 

spicuous white spots, and buttoned boots of brown kid. Hair 
and handkerchief were strongly scented. 

Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further 
toilet than that of dipping his head in a basin of water, which 
stood on the tail of the grand piano. His hair emerged a mass 
of dripping ringlets, covetously eyed by his companions. 

They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, 
whom he overtopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels 
out against the Philistines: three bursting charges of animal 
spirits. 

There was to be a concert that evening at the Conserv- 
atorium, and, through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for 
this reason, were unusually crowded, the young men made a 
kind of triumphal progress. Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, 
young or old, but peddled for a word or a look from him ; and 
he was only too prodigal of insolently expressive glances, whis- 
pered greetings, and warm pressures of the hand. The open 
flattery and bold adoration of which he was the object mounted 
to his head ; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful of self- 
confidence ; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, 
his exhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to 
be kept within decent bounds. 

“ Wait ! ” he cried suddenly, as they were passing the 
Gewandhaus. “Wait a minute! See me make that woman 
there take a fit.” 

He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the 
only person in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging 


68 


MAURICE GUEST 


slowly along, her arms full of parcels; and, planting himself 
directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop, he seized 
both her hands and worked them up and down. 

“ Now upon my soul, who would have thought of seeing 
you here, you baggage, you ? ” he cried vociferously. 

The woman was speechless from amazement; her packages 
fell to the ground, and she gazed open-mouthed at the wild- 
haired lad before her, making, at the same time, vain attempts 
to free her hands. 

“ No, this really is luck,” he went on, holding her fast. 
“Come, a kiss, my duck, just one! Ein Kiisschen in Ehren, 

you know ” and, in very fact, he leaned forward and 

pecked at her cheek. 

The blood dyed her face and she panted with rage. 

“You young scoundrel!” she gasped. “You impertinent 
young dog! I’ll give you in charge. I’ll — I’ll report you to 
the police. Let me go this instant — this very instant, do you 
hear? — or I’ll scream for help.” 

The other two had come over to enjoy the fun. Schilsky 
turned to them with a comical air of dismay, and waved his 
arm. “ Well I declare, if I haven’t been and made a mistake ! ” 
he exclaimed, and slapped his forehead. “ I’m out by I don’t 
know how much — by twenty years, at least. No thank you, 
Madam, keep your kisses! You’re much too old and ugly for 
me.” 

He flourished his big hat in her face, pirouetted on his 
heel, and the three of them went down the street, hallooing 
with laughter. 

They had supper together at the Bavaria > Schilsky standing 
treat; for they had gone by way of the Bruderstrasse, where he 
called in to investigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Af- 
terwards, they commenced an informal wandering from one 
haunt to another, now by themselves, now with stray acquain- 
tances. Krafft, who was still enfeebled by the previous night, 
and who, under the best of circumstances, could not carry as 
much as his friends, was the first to give in. For a time, they 
got him about between them. Then Fiirst grew obstreperous, 
and wanted to pour his beer on the floor as soon as it was set 
before him, so that they were put out of two places, in the 
second of which they left Krafft. But the better half of the 
night was over before Schilsky was comfortably drunk, and in 
a state to unbosom himself to a sympathetic waitress, about the 
, hardship it was to be bound to some one older than yourself. 


MAURICE GUEST 


69 

He shed tears of pity at his lot, and was extremely communi- 
cative. " *n Korper, scha-age I/inen , J n Korper! ” but old, 
old, a " halb’sch Jahrund'rt " older than he was, and des- 
perately jealous. 

“ It’s too bad ; such a nice young man as you are,” said the 
Mamsellj who, herself not very sober, was sitting at ease on 
his knee, swinging her legs. “ But you nice ones are always 
chicken-hearted. Treat her as she deserves, my chuck, and 
make no bones about it. Just let her rip — and you stick to 
me!” 


VI 


One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain 
seemed imminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and 
his hat pulled over his eyes. He was returning from the 
Zeitzerstrasse, where, in a photographer’s show-case, he had a 
few days earlier discovered a large photograph of Louise. 
This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here, no laws of 
breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her as often 
as he chose. 

On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or 
whether the unrest of the weather, the sense of something 
impending, the dusty dryness that craved rain, had got into 
his blood and disquieted him: whatever it was, he felt restless 
and sick for news of her, and, at this very moment, was on his 
way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope of hearing her name. 

But a little adventure befell him which made him forget 
his intention. 

He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden 
blast of wind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen 
single sheets of music. For a moment they whirled high, then 
sank fluttering to the ground, only to rise again and race one 
another along the road. Maurice instinctively gave chase, but 
it was not easy to catch them; no sooner had he secured one 
than the next was out of his reach. 

Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked 
on and laughed, without making any effort to help him; and 
the more he exerted himself, the more she laughed. In one 
hand she was carrying a violin-case, in the other a velvet muff, 
which now and again she raised to her lips, as if to conceal her 
mirth. It was a graceful movement, but an unnecessary one, 
for her laughter was of that charming kind, which never gives 
offence; and, besides that, although it was continuous, it was 
neither hearty enough nor frank enough to be unbecoming — 
the face was well under control. She stood there, with her 
head slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows 
of small, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in 
spite of her merriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the 
young man’s face, as he darted to and fro. 

70 


MAURICE GUEST 


7i 

Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of 
breath though he was. 

“ Now for the last one/’ he said in German. 

At these words she seemed more amused than ever. “ I 
don’t speak German,” she answered in English, with a strong 
American accent. 

Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange 
them for her. 

“ It’s my Kayser,” she explained with a quick, upward 
glance, adding the next minute with a fresh ripple of laugh- 
ter: “ He’s all to pieces.” 

“ You have too much to carry,” said Maurice. “ On such 
a windy day, too.” 

“ That’s what Joan said — Joan is my sister,” she continued. 
“ But I guess it’s so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff 
along. If my fingers are stiff I can’t play, and then Herr 
Becker is angry.” But she laughed again as she spoke, and it 
was plain that the master’s wrath did not exactly incite fear. 
“ Joan always comes along, but to-day she’s sick.” 

“ Will you let me help you? ” asked Maurice, and a moment 
later he was walking at her side. 

She handed over music and violin to him without a trace 
of hesitation; and, as they went along the Promenade , she 
talked to him with as little embarrassment as though they 
were old acquaintances. It was so kind of him to help her, she 
thought; she couldn’t imagine how she would ever have got 
home without him, alone against the wind ; and she was per- 
fectly sure he must be American — no one but an American 
would be so nice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed 
very much indeed, and was not sure, this being the case, 
whether she could like him or not; as a rule, she didn’t like 
English people; they were stiff and horrid, and were always 
wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here she 
carried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mis- 
chievously at him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never 
known anyone so easily moved to laughter ; whenever she 
spoke she laughed, and she laughed at everything he said. 

Off the Promenade , where the trees were of a marvellous 
pale green, they turned into a street of high, spacious houses, 
the dark lines of which were here and there broken by an 
arched gateway, or the delicate tints of a spring garden. To a 
window in one of the largest houses, Maurice’s little friend 
looked up, and smiled and nodded. 


MAURICE GUEST 


72 


“ There’s my sister.” 

The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, 
who, when she found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew 
in her head, and as abruptly put it out again, leaning her two 
hands on the sill. 

“ She’s wondering who it is,” said Maurice’s companion 
gleefully. Then, turning her face up, she made a speaking- 
trumpet of her hands, and cried: “ It’s all right, Joan. — Now I 
must run right up and tell her about it,” she said to Maurice. 
“ Perhaps she’ll scold ; Joan is very particular. Good-bye. 
Thank you ever so much for being so good to me — oh, won’t 
you tell me your name ? ” 

The very next morning brought him a small pink note, 
faintly scented. The pointed handwriting was still childish, 
but there was a coquettish flourish beneath the pretty signa- 
ture: Ephie Cayhill. Besides a graceful word of thanks, she 
wrote: We are at home every Sunday. Mamma would be 
very pleased. 

Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on 
doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English- 
speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. 
Foreigners were not excluded — Maurice discovered two or three 
of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their 
knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was 
necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had 
also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made 
of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the 
art of looking amiable, while these visitors from other lands 
heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that did not 
please them in the life and laws of this country that was tem- 
porarily their home. 

Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfort- 
able, vegetable existence, and found it a task to rise from the 
plump sofa-cushion. Her pleasant features were slack, and 
in those moments of life which called for a sudden decision, 
they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman who has 
never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on prac- 
tical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an 
immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, 
and slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was 
for ever lost in the joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, 
and, in consequence, remained for the most part completely 
ignorant of what was going on around her. When she did 


MAURICE GUEST 


73 

happen to become conscious of her surroundings, she was cal- 
lous, or merely indifferent, to them; for, compared with ro- 
mance, life was dull and diffuse ; it lacked the wilful simplicity, 
the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives, which 
make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing 
work of selection and rejection, which it is the story-teller’s 
duty to perform for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. 
Cayhill’s net; she lived in a world of intrigue and excite- 
ment, and, seated in her easy-chair by the sitting-room window, 
was generally as remote from her family as though she were in 
Timbuctoo. 

There was a difference of ten years in age between her 
daughters, and it was the younger of the two whose education 
was being completed. Johanna, the elder, had been a dis- 
appointment to her mother. Left to her own devices at an 
impressionable age, the girl had developed bookish tastes at 
the cost of her appearance: influenced by a free-thinking tutor 
of her brothers’, she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe 
and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university 
career, but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when 
Mrs. Cayhill, who felt her world toppling about her ears at 
the mention of such a thing, said: “Not while I live!” she 
yielded, without a further word ; and the fact that such an 
emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from the mild- 
tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other 
member of the family took Johanna’s part. So she buried her 
ambitions, and kept her mother’s house in an admirable, me- 
thodical way. 

It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna 
adored her little sister, and would cheerfully have given up 
more than this for her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just 
emerging from childhood, was very pretty and precocious, and 
her mother had great hopes of her. She also tired early of her 
lesson-books, and, soon after she turned sixteen, declared her 
intention of leaving school. As at least a couple of years 
had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introduced 
in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her 
life, determined that travel in Europe should put the final 
touches to Ephie’s education: a little German and French; 
some finishing lessons on the violin; a run through Italy and 
Switzerland, and then to Paris, whence they would carry back 
with them a complete and costly outfit. So, valiantly, Mrs. 
Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together with Johanna, 


MAURICE GUEST 


74 

who would as soon have thought of denying her age as of let- 
ting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, they 
crossed the Atlantic. 

For some three months now, they had been established in 
Leipzig. A circulating library, rich in English novels, had 
been discovered; Mrs. Cayhill was content; and it began to 
be plain to Johanna that the greater part of their two years’ 
absence would be spent in this place. Ephie, too, had already 
had time to learn that, as far as music was concerned, her 
business was not so much with finishing as with beginning, 
and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must 
follow, w^as a steep one. She might have found it still more 
arduous, had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man 
and very impressionable. And Ephie never looked more 
charming than when, with her rounded, dimpled arm raised 
in an exquisite curve, she leaned her cheek against the glossy 
brown wood of her violin. 

She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, 
before which old and young go helplessly down. She was 
small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, 
rounded hands and wrists, that were dimpled like a baby’s. 
Her brown hair was drawn back from the low forehead, but, 
both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into innumer- 
able little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the 
rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin 
of a cherry; it had that exquisite freshness which is only to 
be found in a very young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom 
on ripe fruit. Her dark blue eyes were well opened, but the 
black lashes were so long and so peculiarly straight that the 
eyes themselves were usually hidden, and this made it all the 
more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded like wax, 
the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it; 
anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and 
consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of 
questioning amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the 
face: bright red, full, yet delicate, arched like a bow, with 
corners that went in and upwards, it belonged, by right of its 
absolute innocence, to the face of a little child ; and the thought 
was monstrous that nature and the years would eventually 
combine to destroy so perfect a thing. 

She also had a charming laugh, wdth a liquid note in it, that 
made one think of water bubbling on a dry summer day. 

It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday after- 


MAURICE GUEST 


75 

noon, and drew the handful of young men together, time after 
time. 

Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside 
her book, was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, 
and Johanna only counted in so far as she made and distributed 
cups of tea at the end of the room. She did not look with 
favour on the young men who gathered there, and her manner 
to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in turn, as 
he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for some- 
thing to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with 
Johanna. The ordinary small change and polite common- 
place of conversation, she met with a silent contempt. In 
musical chit-chat, she took no interest whatever, and pretended 
to none, openly indeed “ detested music,” and was unable to dis- 
tinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, “except by the noise;” 
while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the 
literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled 
at what he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly con- 
tradicted him. She was the thorn in the flesh of these young 
men; and after having dutifully spent a few awkward mo- 
ments at her side, they stole back, one by one, to the opposite 
end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly dressed in blue, 
swung to and fro in a big American rocking-chair — going 
backwards, it carried her feet right off the ground — and talked 
charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own light 
laugh, and her mother’s deeper notes, which went on like an 
organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephie said, 
matchlessly amusing. 

As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first 
time — it now leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday after- 
noon in the Lessingstrasse — he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. 
Not in a disparaging way; Dove had never been heard to 
mention a woman’s name otherwise than with respect. And, 
in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna’s good quali- 
ties, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her, 
and remain at her side ; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with 
Ephie, and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in 
the field. 

“ You should get on with her, I think, Guest,” he said 
slily. “ You read these German writers she is so interested 
in. But don’t be discouraged by her manner. For though 
she’s one of the most unselfish women I ever met, her way of 
speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if it doesn’t 


MAURICE GUEST 


76 

sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of the 
sort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to.” 

When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleas- 
ant words from Mrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself stand- 
ing beside Johanna, the truth of Dove’s simile was obvious to 
him. This dark, unattractive girl had apparently no thought 
for anything but her tea-making; she moved the cups this 
way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lighted 
again the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least 
heed to Maurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of 
being occupied, that it would have needed a brave man to break 
in upon her duties with idle words. He remained standing, 
however, in a constrained silence, which lasted until she could 
not invent anything else to do, and was obliged to drink her 
own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which he meant 
to be easy, but which was only jaunty: “ And how do you like 
being in Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very 
strange after America?” 

Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked 
coolly and disconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if 
she had just become aware of his presence. 

“Strange? Why should it?” she asked in an unfriendly 
tone. 

“ Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here 
from what you are accustomed to — at least it is from what we 
are used to in England,” he corrected himself. “ The ways 
and manners, and the language, and all that sort of thing, 
you know.” 

“ Excuse me, I do not know,” she answered in the same 
tone as before. “ If a person takes the trouble to prepare him- 
self for residence in a foreign country, nothing need seem 
either strange or surprising. But English people, as is well 
known, expect to find a replica of England in every country 
they go to.” 

There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a 
regular visitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the 
circle knew, of course, that Johanna was “ doing for a new 
man”; and it seemed to Maurice that James half closed one 
eye at him, and gave him a small, sympathetic nudge with his 
elbow. 

So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began 
anew, without preamble. 

“ My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German 


MAURICE GUEST 77 

literature ? ” he said with a slight upward inflection in his 
voice. 

Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at 
him, and colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea- 
things. 

I’ve done a little in that line myself,” continued Mau- 
rice, as she made no move to answer him. “In a modest 
way, of course. Just lately I finished reading the Jungfrau 
von Orleans ” 

“ Is that so?” said Johanna with an emphasis which made 
him colour also. 

“ It is very fine, is it not? ” he asked less surely, and as she 
again acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence 
of mind. “I suppose you know it? You’re sure to.” 

This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her 
on a sore spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. 
“ And I suppose,” she said, and her hands shook a little as 
they fussed about the tray, “ that you have also read Maria 
Stuart, and Tell, and a page or two of Jean Paul. You have 
perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider Heine 
the one and only German poet.” 

Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had 
spoken so loudly and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned 
on them, making it incumbent on him not to take offence. 
He emptied his cup, and put it down, and tried to give the 
matter an airy turn. 

“ And why not ? ” he asked pleasantly. “ Is there anything 
wrong in thinking so? Schiller and Goethe were great poets, 
weren’t they? And you will grant that Heine is the only 
German writer who has had anything approaching a style?” 

Johanna’s face grew stony. “ I have no intention of grant- 
ing anything,” she said. “ Like all English people — it flatters 
your national vanity, I presume — you think German literature 
began and ended with Heine. — A miserable Jew!” 

“ Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for 
being a Jew, can you? What has that got to do with it?” 
exclaimed Maurice, this being a point of view that had never 
presented itself to him. And as Johanna only murmured some- 
thing that was inaudible, he added lamely: “Then you don’t 
think much of Heine? ” 

But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an 
expression of opinion, and the young man continued, with 
apology in his tone: “ It may be bad taste on my part, of 


MAURICE GUEST 


78 

course. But one hears it said on every side. If you could 
tell me what I ought to read ... or, perhaps, advise me 
a little ? ” he ended tentatively. 

“ I don’t lend my books,” said Johanna more rudely than 
she had yet spoken. And that was all Maurice could get 
from her. A minute or two later, she rose and went out of 
the room. 

It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed 
behind her. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill 
allowed herself to find what her little daughter said, droller 
than before. With an appearance of unconcern, Maurice 
strolled back to the group by the window. Dove was also 
talking of literature. 

“ That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you 
on Wednesday, Mrs. Cayhill?” he asked, at the same instant 
springing forward to pick up Ephie’s handkerchief, which had 
fallen to the ground. 

“ Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of 
. you,” answered Mrs. Cayhill. “ Ephie, darling, the sun is 
shining right on your face.” 

“What was it? ” asked James, while Dove jumped up anew 
to lower the blind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to 
shade her eyes. 

Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once — 
she had a “ wretched memory for names ” — and went over 
what she had been reading. 

“ Let me see, it was . . . no, that was yesterday: Shadowed 
by Three , a most delightful Book. On Friday, Richard Els- 
mere, and — oh, yes, I know, it was about a farm, an Australian 
farm.” 

“ The Story of an African Farm ” put in Dove mildly, re- 
turning to his seat. 

“ Australian or African, it doesn’t matter which,” said Mrs. 
Cayhill. “Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and 
very foolish at the end — the disguising, and the dying out of 
doors, and the looking-glass, and all that.” 

“ I must say I think it a very powerful book,” said Dove 
solemnly. “ That part, you know, where the boy listens to 
the clock ticking in the night, and thinks to himself that 
with every tick, a soul goes home to God. A very striking 
idea!” 

“Why, I think it must be a horrid book,” cried Ephie. 
“ All about dying. Fancy some one dying every minute. It 


MAURICE GUEST 


79 


couldn’t possibly be true. For then the world would soon 
be empty.” 

“ Always there are coming more into it,” said Fiirst, in his 
blunt, broken English. 

A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and 
the American men present were suddenly fascinated by the 
bottoms of their cups. Ephie was the first to regain her com- 
posure. 

“ Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite 
different— from dying.” She turned and, over her shoulder, 
laughed mischievously at Maurice, who was sitting behind 
her. Then, leaning forward in her chair, with every eye 
upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music from 
the wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridicu- 
lous. . By her prettily exaggerated description of a heated, 
perspiring young man, darting to and fro, and muttering to 
himself in German, her hearers, Maurice included, were 
highly diverted — and no one more than Mrs. Cayhill. 

“You puss, you puss!” she cried, wiping her eyes and 
shaking a finger at the naughty girl. 

The general amusement had hardly subsided when Fiirst 
rose to his feet, and, drawing his heels together, made a 
flowery little speech, the gist of which was, that he would have 
esteemed himself a most fortunate man, had he been in 
Maurice’s place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks, and 
shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Fiirst, who had spoken 
seriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; 
and Boehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be 
American fashion, smiled in a superior manner, to show he was 
aware that Fiirst was making himself ridiculous. 

“Look here, Miss Ephie,” said James; “the next time 
you have to go out alone, just send for me, and I’ll take care 
of you.” 

“ Or me,” said Dove. “ You have only to let me know.” 

“No, no, Mr. Dove!” cried Mrs. Cayhill. “You do far 
too much for her as it is. You’ll spoil her altogether.” 

But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: 
that would be impossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, 
raised her lashes, and distributed winning smiles. When quiet 
had been restored, she assured them that they were all very 
kind, but she would never let anyone go with her but Joan — 
dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was of 
Joan. 


8o 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ She is worth more than all of you put together.” And at 
the cries of : “ Oh, oh ! ” she was thrown into a new fit of 
merriment, and went still further. “ I would not give Joan’s 
little finger for anyone in the world.” 

And meanwhile, as all her hearers — all, that is to say, ex- 
cept Dove, who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and 
gazing at Ephie with fondly reproachful eyes — as all of them, 
with Mrs. Cayhill at their head, made vehement protest 
against this sweeping assertion, Johanna sat alone in her bed- 
room, at the back of the house. It was a dull room, looking 
on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it from 
the flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little 
table to the window, she sat down and began to read. But, 
on this day, her thoughts wandered; and, ultimately, propping 
her chin on her hand, she fell into reverie, which began with 
something like “ the fool and his Schiller! ” and ended with her 
rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelves that stood 
at the foot of the bed. 

She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, 
then returned them to their places on the shelf. No, she said 
to herself, why should she? What she had told the young 
man was true: she never lent her books; he would soil them, 
or, worse still, not appreciate them as he ought — she could 
not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, credit for a 
nice taste. 

Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, 
for, the very next time Maurice was there, she met him in the 
passage, as he was leaving, and impulsively thrust a paper 
parcel into his hand. 

“ There is a book, if you care to take it.” 

He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at 
the title. But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, 
made a face of laughing stupefaction behind her sister’s back, 
and went out on the landing with him, to whisper: “What 
have you been doing to Joan?” — at which remark, and at 
Maurice’s blank face, she laughed so immoderately that she 
was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joan 
should hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white- 
clad little figure, and waved her hand to him until he turned 
the corner. 

Having read the first volume of Hammer und Amboss deep 
into two nights, Maurice returned it and carried away the 
second. But it was only after he had finished Problematische 


MAURICE GUEST 


81 


Naturen, and had expressed himself with due enthusiasm, 
that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did not discuss what 
he read with him; but, going on the assumption that a person 
who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, 
she gave the young man the following proof of her favour. 

Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously 
a mutual liking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For 
Ephie knew nothing of Maurice’s tastes, interests and ambi- 
tions, and he did not dream of asking her to share them. Yet, 
with the safe instincts of a young girl, she chose him for a 
brother from among all her other acquaintances; called him 
“ Morry ” ; scarcely ever coquetted with him ; and let him 
freely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was 
attracted to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; 
she was also adorably equable — she did not know what it was 
to be out of humour. And she was always glad to see him, 
always in the best possible spirits. When he was dull or tired, 
it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let her merry chatter 
run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts to see 
her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a 
week with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; 
and he ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to 
find old Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill. 

The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship 
of her daughter with this young man than the ordinary 
American mother would have done; but Johanna’s toleration 
of it was, for the most part, to be explained by the literary in- 
terests before mentioned. For Johanna was always in a trem- 
ble lest Ephie should become spoiled ; and thoughtless Ephie 
could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being pret- 
tily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming 
to have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. 
This, and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when 
every day might be expected to widen the distance between 
them, sometimes made Johanna very gruff and short, even with 
Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone knew how much was 
good and true under the child’s light exterior; she admired in 
Ephie all that she herself had not — her fair prettiness, her 
blithe manner, her easy, graceful words — and, had it been 
necessary, she would have gone down on her knees to remove 
the stones from Ephie’s path. 

Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made 
the impression of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round 


82 


MAURICE GUEST 


two childlike beings, intercepting the sunshine of their lives, 
yet Maurice had soon come often enough into contact with 
her to appreciate her unselfishness; and, for the care she took 
of Ephie, he could almost have liked her, had Johanna shown 
the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did not under- 
stand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the 
depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of con- 
tempt in which she held the young men who dangled there on 
a Sunday — poor fools who were growing fat on emotion and 
silly ideas, when they should have been taking plain, hard fare 
at college. To Dove, Johanna had a particular aversion; 
chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because it was evident to 
all that his intentions were serious. But she could not hinder 
wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and then 
laughing at him behind his back — a laugh in which Mrs. Cay- 
hill was not always able to refrain from joining, though it must 
be said that she was usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the 
expense of all visitors who were not American. 

“ From these Dutch you can’t expect much, one way or the 
other,” she declared. “ And young Guest sometimes sits there 
with a face as long as my arm. But Dove is really a most 
sensible young fellow — why, he thinks just as I do about 
America.” 

And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house 
on Sunday afternoon, his pockets bulged with New York 
Heralds . 


VII 


Meanwhile, before the blinds in the Briiderstrasst were 
drawn up again, Maurice had found his way back to Made- 
leine. When they met, she smiled at him in a somewhat sar- 
castic manner, but no reference was made to the little falling- 
out they had had, and they began afresh to read and play to- 
gether. On the first afternoon, Maurice was full of his new 
friends, and described them at length to her. But Madeleine 
damped his ardour. 

“ I know them, yes, of course,” she said. “ The usual 
Americans — even the blue-stocking, from whom heaven defend 
us. The little one is pretty enough as long as she keeps her 
mouth shut. But the moment she speaks, every illusion is 
shattered. — Why I don’t go there on a Sunday? Good gra- 
cious, do you think they want me? — me, or any other petti- 
coat? Are honours made to be divided? — No, Maurice, I don’t 
like Americans. I was once offered a position in America, as 
‘ professor of piano and voice-production ’ in a place called 
Schenectady; but I didn’t hesitate. I said to myself, better 
one hundred a year in good old England, than five in a coun- 
try where the population is so inflated with its importance that 
I should always be in danger of running amuck. And besides 
that, I should lose my accent, and forget how to say ‘ leg ’ ; 
while the workings of the stomach would be discussed before 
me with an unpleasant freedom.” 

“ You’re too hard on them, Madeleine,” said Maurice, smil- 
ing in spite of himself. But he was beginning to stand in awe 
of her sharp tongue and decided opinions; and, in the week 
that followed, he took himself resolutely together, and did not 
let a certain name cross his lips. 

Consequently, he was more than surprised on returning to 
his room one day, to find a note from Madeleine, saying that 
she expected Louise that very afternoon at three. 

It was not news to Maurice that Louise had come home. 
The evening before, as he turned out of the Bruderstrasse, a 
closed droschke turned into it. After the vehicle had lumbered 
past him and disappeared, the thought crossed his mind that she 

83 


MAURICE GUEST 


84 

might be inside it. He had not then had time to go back, but 
early this very morning, he had passed the house and found the 
windows open. So Madeleine had engaged her immediately! 
As usual, Fiirst had kept him waiting for his lesson; it was 
nearly three o’clock already, and he was so hurried that he 
could only change his collar; but, on the way there, in a sud- 
den spurt of gratitude, he ran to a flower-shop, and bought a 
large bunch of carnations. 

He arrived at Madeleine’s room in an elation he did not try 
to hide ; and over the carnations they had a mock reconciliation. 
Madeleine wished to distribute the flowers in different vases 
about the room, but he asked her put them all together on the 
centre table. She laughed and complied. 

For several weeks now, musical circles had been in a stir 
over the advent of a new piano-teacher named Schrievers — a 
person who called himself a pupil of Liszt, held progressive 
views, and, being a free lance, openly ridiculed the antiquated 
methods of the Conservatorium. Madeleine was extremely 
interested in the case, and, as they sat waiting, talked about 
it to Maurice with great warmth, enlarging especially upon the 
number of people who had the audacity to call themselves pupils 
of Liszt. To Maurice, in his present frame of mind, the mat- 
ter seemed of no possible consequence — for all he cared, the 
whole population of the town might lay claim to having been 
at Weimar — and he could not understand Madeleine finding 
it important. For he was in one of those moods when the 
entire consciousness is so intently directed towards some end 
that, outside this end, nothing has colour or vitality: all that 
has previously impressed and interested one, has no more 
solidity than papier mache. Meanwhile she spoke on, and did 
not appear to notice how time was flying. He was forced at 
length to take out his watch, and exclaim, in feigned surprise, 
at the hour. 

“ A quarter to four already ! ” 

“ Is it so late?” But on seeing his disturbance, she added: 
“ It will be all right. Louise was never punctual in her life.” 

He did his best to look unconcerned, and they spoke of that 
evening’s Abendunterhaltung } at which Fiirst was to play. But 
by the time the clock struck four, Maurice had relapsed, in 
spite of himself, into silence. Madeleine rallied him. 

“You must make shift with my company, Maurice. Not 
but what I am sure Louise will come. But you see from this 
what she is — the most unreliable creature in the world.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


85 

To pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to 
make tea, and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the 
passage whizzed harshly, and the next moment there came a 
knock at the door. But it was not Louise. Instead, two per- 
sons entered, one of whom was Heinrich Krafft, the other a 
short, thickset girl, in a man’s felt hat and a closely buttoned 
ulster. 

On recognising her visitors, Madeleine made a movement 
of annoyance, and drew her brows together. “You, Heinz! ” 
she said. 

Undaunted by this greeting, Krafft advanced to her and, 
taking her hands, kissed them, one after the other. He was 
also about to kiss her on the lips, but she defended herself. 
“Stop! We are not alone.” 

“ Just for that reason,” said the girl in the ulster drily. 

“ What ill wind blows you here to-day?” Madeleine asked 
him. 

As he was still wearing his hat, she took it off, and dropped 
it on the floor beside him; then she recollected Maurice, and 
made him known to the other two. Coming forward, Maurice 
recalled to Krafft’s memory where they had already met, and 
what had passed between them. Before he had finished speak- 
ing, Krafft burst into an unmannerly peal of laughter. Made- 
leine laughed, too, and shook her finger at him. “You have 
been up to your tricks again ! ” Avery Hill, the girl in the 
ulster, did not laugh aloud, but a smile played round her mouth, 
which Maurice found even more disagreeable than the mirth 
of which he had been the innocent cause. He coloured, and 
withdrew to the window. 

Krafft was so convulsed that he was obliged to sit down on 
the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. 
He had been seized by a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and 
on, in a mirthless way, till Avery Hill said suddenly and 
angrily: “Stop laughing at once, Heinz! You will have 
hysterics.” 

In an instant he was sobered, and now he seemed to fall, 
without transition, into a mood of dejection. Taking out his 
penknife, he set to paring his nails, in a precise and preoccupied 
manner. Madeleine turned to Maurice. 

“ You’ll wonder what all this is about,” she said apol- 
ogetically. “ But Heinz is never happier than when he has 
succeeded in imposing on some one — as he evidently did on 
you.” 


86 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Indeed! ” said Maurice. Their laughter had been offensive 
to him, and he found Krafft, and Madeleine with him, ex- 
ceedingly foolish. 

There was a brief silence. Krafft was absorbed in what 
he was doing, and Avery Hill, on sitting down, had lighted a 
cigarette, which she smoked steadily, in long-drawn whiffs. 
She was a pretty girl, in spite of her severe garb, in spite, too, 
of her expression, which was too composed and too self-sure 
to be altogether pleasing. Her face was fresh of skin, below 
smooth fair hair, and her lips were the red, ripe lips of Botti- 
celli’s angels and Madonnas. But the under one, being fuller 
than the other, gave the mouth a look of over-decision, and it 
would be difficult to imagine anything less girlish than were 
the cold grey eyes. 

“ We came for the book you promised to lend Heinz,” she 
said, blowing off the spike of ash that had accumulated at the 
tip of the cigarette. “ He could not rest till he had it.” 

Madeleine placed a saucer on the table with the request to 
use it as an ash-tray, and taking down a volume of De Quincey 
from the hanging shelf, held it out to Krafft. 

“ There you are. It will interest me to hear what you make 
of it.” 

Krafft ceased his paring to glance at the title-page. “ I 
shall probably not open it,” he said. 

Madeleine laughed, and gave him a light blow on the hand 
with the book. “ How like you that is! As soon as you know 
that you can get a thing, you don’t want it any longer.” 

“ Yes, that’s Heinz all over,” said Avery Hill. “ Only what 
he hasn’t got, seems worth having.” 

Krafft shut his knife with a click, and put it back in his 
pocket. “ And that’s what you women can’t understand, isn’t 
it? — that the best of things is the wishing for them. Once 
there, and they are nothing — only another delusion. The hap- 
piest man is the man whose wishes are never fulfilled. He 
always has a moon to cry for.” 

“ Come, come now,” said Madeleine. “ We know your 
love for paradox. But not to-day. There’s no time for philos- 
ophising to-day. Besides, you are in a pessimistic mood, and 
that’s a bad sign.” 

“ I and pessimism ? Listen, heart of my heart, I have a new 
story for you.” He moved closer to her, and put his arm round 
her neck. “ There was once a man and his wife ” 

But, at the first word, Madeleine put her hands to her ears. 


MAURICE GUEST 


87 

“Mercy, have mercy, Heinz! No stories, I entreat you. 
And behave yourself, too. Take your arm away.” She tried 
to remove it. “ I have told you already, I can’t have you here 
to-day. I’m expecting a visitor.” 

He laid his head on her shoulder. “ Let him come. Let 
the whole world come. I don’t budge. I am happy here.” 

“ You must go and be happy elsewhere,” said Madeleine 
more decisively than she had yet spoken. “ And before she 
comes, too.” 

“She? What she?” 

“ Never mind.” 

“ For that very reason, Mada.” 

She whispered a word in his ear. He looked at her, in- 
credulously at first, then whimsically, with a sham dismay; and 
then, as if Maurice had only just taken shape for him, he turned 
and looked at him also, and from him to Madeleine, and back 
to him, finally bursting afresh into a roar of laughter. Made- 
leine laid her hand over his mouth. “ Take him away, do,” 
she said to Avery Hill — “ as a favour to me.” 

“Yes, when I have finished my cigarette,” said the girl 
without stirring. 

Unsettled all the same, it would seem, by what he had heard, 
Krafft rose and shuffled about the room, with his hands in his 
pockets. Approaching Maurice, he even stood for a moment 
and contemplated him, with a kind of mock gravity. Maurice 
acted as if he did not see Krafft; long since, he had taken up a 
magazine, and, half hidden in a chair between window and 
writing-table, pretended to bury himself in its contents. But 
he heard very plainly all that passed, and, at the effect pro- 
duced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his 
hands trembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking 
at him for another second, he would have got up and knocked 
him down. But Krafft turned nonchalantly to the piano, 
where his attention was caught by a song that was standing on 
the rack. He chuckled, and set about making merciless fun 
of the music — the composer was an elderly singing-teacher, of 
local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to take it from 
him. 

“ Hold your tongue, Heinz! If your own songs were more 
like this, they would have a better chance of success. Now be 
quiet! I won’t hear another word. Herr Wendling is a very 
good friend of mine.” 

“ A friend ! Heavens ! She says friend as if it were an excuse 


88 


MAURICE GUEST 


for him. — Mada, let your friend cease making music if he 
hopes for salvation. Let him make what else he will — wind or 
water ” 

“ You are disgusting! ” 

She had got the music from him, but he was already at the 
piano, parodying, from memory, the conventional accompani- 
ment and sentimental words of the song. “ And this,” he said, 
“ from the learned ass who is not yet convinced that the Feuer - 
zauber is music, and who groans like a dredge when the last 
act of Siegfried is mentioned. Wendling and Wagner! Listen 
to this! — for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite.” 

He felt after the chords that prelude Briinnhilde’s awaken- 
ing by Siegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, 
as though what went on had nothing to do with her; but no 
sooner had Krafft commenced to play than she grew uneasy; 
her eyes lost their cold assurance, and, suddenly getting up and 
going round to the front of the piano, she pushed the young 
man’s hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place to her, 
and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. 
She played very well — even Maurice in his disturbance could 
not but notice it — with a firm, masculine touch, and that in- 
born ease, that enviable appearance of perfect fitness, of being 
one with the instrument, which even the greatest players do not 
always attain. She had, besides, grip and rhythm, and her 
long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves artfully among 
the complicated harmonies. 

When she began to play, Madeleine made “ Tch, tch, tch! ” 
and shook her head, in despair of now ever being rid of them. 
Krafft remained standing behind the piano at the window, 
leaning his forehead on the glass. Maurice, who watched them 
both surreptitiously, saw his face change, and grow thought- 
ful as he stood there; but when Avery Hill ceased abruptly, 
ort a discord, he wheeled round at once and patted her on the 
back. While looking over to Maurice, he said: “No doubt 
you found that very pretty and affecting?” 

“ I think that’s none of your business,” said Maurice. 

But Krafft did not take umbrage. “You don’t say so?” 
he murmured with a show of surprise. 

“ Now, go, go, go! ” cried Madeleine. “ What have I done, 
to be subjected to such a visitation? No, Heinz, you don’t sit 
down again. Here’s your hat. Away with you! — or I’ll have 
you put out by force.” 

And at last they really did go, to a cool bow from Maurice, 


MAURICE GUEST 


89 

who still sat holding his magazine. But Madeleine had hardly 
closed the door behind them, when, like a whirlwind, Krafft 
burst into the room again. 

“ Mada, I forgot to ask you something,” he said in a stage- 
whisper, drawing her aside. “Tell me — you Kupplerin , you! 
— does he know her? ” He pointed over his shoulder with his 
thumb at Maurice. 

Madeleine shook her head, in real vexation and distress, and 
laid a finger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over 
to Maurice, Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his 
breast. 

“ It is impossible for you to understand how deeply 
it has interested me to meet you,” he said. “ Allow me, from 
the bottom of my heart, to wish you success.” Whereupon, 
before Maurice could say “ damn ! ” he was gone again, leaving 
his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke. 

Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of 
relief. 

“ Thank goodness ! I thought they would never go. And 
now, the chances are, they’ll run into Louise on the stairs. 
You’ll wonder why I was so bent on getting rid of them. It’s 
a long story. I’ll tell it to you some other time. But if 
Louise had found them here when she came, she would not 
have stayed. She won’t have anything to do with Heinz.” 

“ I don’t wonder at it,” said Maurice. He stood up and 
threw the magazine on the table. 

Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. 
“Why what’s the matter? You’re surely not going to take 
what Heinz said, seriously? He was in a bad mood to-day, 
I know, and I noticed you were very short with him. But 
you mustn’t be foolish enough to be offended by him. No one 
ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He’s 
our spoilt child.” 

Maurice laughed. “ The fellow is either a cad, or an un- 
utterable fool. You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence 
amusing. I tell you candidly, I don’t ! ” and he went on to 
make it clear to her that the fault would not be his, were 
Krafft and he ever in the same room together again. “ The 
kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce 
did he mean by guffawing like that when you told him who 
was coming?” 

“You mean about Louise? ” Madeleine gave a slight shrug. 
“ Yes, Maurice — unfortunately that was not to be avoided. 


go MAURICE GUEST 

But sit down again, and let me explain things to you. When 
you hear ” 

But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an 
answer to the question he had put; his chief concern now was 
to get away. To stay there, in that room, for another quarter 
of an hour, would be impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. 
To stay — for what? Only to listen to more slanderous hints, 
of the kind he had heard before. As it was, he did not be- 
lieve he could face her frankly, should she still come. He felt 
as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering with 
her good name. 

“You will surely not be so childish?” said Madeleine, on 
seeing him take up his hat. 

“Childish? — you call it childish?” he exclaimed, growing 
angry with her, too. “ Do you know what time it is? Three 
o’clock, you write me, and it’s now a quarter past five. I have 
sat here doing nothing for over two mortal hours. It seems 
to me that’s enough, without being made the butt of your 
friends’ wit into the bargain. I’m sick of the whole thing. 
Good-bye.” 

“ We seem bound to quarrel,” said Madeleine calmly. 
“ And always about Louise. But there’s no use in being angry. 
I am not responsible for what Heinz says and does. And on 
the mere chance of his coming in to-day, to sit down and unroll 
another savoury story to you, about your idol — would you have 
thanked me for it? Remember the time I did try to open your 
eyes! — It’s not fair either to blame me because Louise hasn’t 
come. I did my best for you. I can’t help it if she’s as un- 
stable as water.” 

“ I think you dislike her too much to want to help it,” said 
Maurice grimly. He stood staring at the carnations, and his 
resentment gave way to depression, as he recalled the mood in 
which he had bought them. 

“ Come back as soon as you feel better. I’m not offended, 
remember!” Madeleine called after him as he went down the 
stairs. When she was alone, she said “ Silly boy! ” and, still 
smiling, made excuses for him: he had come with such pleas- 
urable anticipations, and everything had gone wrong. Heinz 
had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. While as for 
Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wisp of 
straw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not 
to have known it. 

She moved about the room, putting chairs and papers in 


MAURICE GUEST 


9i 


their places, for she could not endure disorder of any kind. 
Then she sat down to write a letter; and when, some half 
hour later, the girl for whom they had waited, actually came, 
she met her with exclamations of genuine surprise. 

“ Is it really you? I had given you up long ago. Pray, do 
you know what time it is ? ” 

She took out her watch and dangled it before the other’s 
eyes. But Louise Dufrayer hardly glanced at it. As, however, 
Madeleine persisted, she said: “I’m late, I know. But it 
was not my fault. I couldn’t get away.” 

She unpinned her hat, and shook back her hair; and Made- 
leine helped her to take off her jacket, talking all the time. “ I 
have been much annoyed with you. Does it never occur to you 
that you may put other people in aw T kward positions, by not 
keeping your word? But you are just the same as of old — in- 
corrigible.” 

“Then why try to improve me?” said the other with a 
show of lightness. But almost simultaneously she turned away 
from Madeleine’s matter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief 
over her lips, and after making a vain attempt to control herself, 
burst into tears. 

Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. “What’s the matter with 
you ? ” 

But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely 
shook her head, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such 
emotional outbreaks were distasteful, went to the writing- 
table and busied herself there, with her back to the room. She 
did not ask for an explanation, nor did her companion offer 
any. 

Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint 
as though she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes 
with both hands, and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had 
apparently been held for some time in check. 

Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her 
face on her hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive 
breath, watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she 
took the cup that was handed to her, she was so far herself 
again as to inquire whom she was to have met, although her 
voice still did not obey her properly. 

“ Some one who is anxious to know you,” replied Madeleine 
with an air of mystery. “ But he couldn’t, or rather would 
not, wait so long.” 

Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said 


92 


MAURICE GUEST 


with meaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the 
course of the afternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed. 

“What! Does he still exist?” she asked with an effort at 
playfulness, 

“ As you very well know,” answered Madeleine drily. 
“ Tell me, Louise, how do you manage to keep out of his 
way? ” 

Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, 
and the dark blood that had stained her face, in a manner dis- 
tressing to see, slowly retreated. She continued to look down, 
and, the light of her big, dark eyes gone out, her face seemed 
wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her, asked herself, not for 
the first time, but, as always, with an unclear irritation, what 
the secret of the other’s charm was. Beautiful she had never 
thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way — at 
best, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black 
of eyes and hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile 
mouth — and some people, hopeless devotees of a pink and 
white fairness, had been known to call her plain. At this mo- 
ment, she was looking her worst; the heavy, blue-black lines 
beneath hsj eyes were deepened by crying; her rough hair had 
been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing a shabby 
red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button was 
missing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she 
looked her twenty-eight years, every day of them — and more. 

And yet, Madeleine knew that those who admired Louise 
would find her as desirable at this moment as at any other. 
Hers was a nameless charm; it was present in each gesture of 
the slim hands, in each turn of the head, in every movement of 
the broad, slender body. Strangers felt it instantly; her very 
walk seemed provocative of notice; there was something in the 
way her skirts clung, and moved with her, that was different 
from the motion of other women’s. And those whose type 
she embodied went crazy about her. Madeleine remembered 
as though it were yesterday, the afternoon on which Heinz had 
burst in to rave to her of his discovery; and how he would 
have dragged her out hatless to see this miracle. She remem- 
bered, too, after-days, when she had had him there, pacing the 
floor, and pouring out his feelings to her, infatuated, mad. And 
he was not the only one; they bowled over like ninepins; and 
it would be the same for years to come — was there any reason 
to wonder at Maurice Guest? 

Meanwhile, as Madeleine sat thinking these and similar 


MAURICE GUEST 


93 


things, Maurice was tramping through the Rosental. The 
May afternoon, of lucent sunshine and heaped, fleecy clouds, 
had tempted a host of people into the great park, but he soon 
left them all behind him, for he walked as though he were pur- 
sued. These people, placid, and content of face, and the bright- 
ness of the day, jarred on him; he was out of patience with 
himself, with Madeleine, with the world at large. Especially 
with Madeleine ; he bore her a grudge for her hints and innuen- 
does, for being behind the scenes, as it were, and also for being 
so ready to enlighten him; but, most of all, for a certain 
malicious gratification, which was to be felt in every word she 
said about Louise. 

He w T ent steadily on, against the level bars of the afternoon 
sun; and, by the time he had tired himself bodily, he had 
worked of! his inward vexation as well. As he walked back 
towards the towm, he was almost ready to smile at his previous 
heat. What did all these others matter to him? They could 
not hinder him from carrying through what he had set his mind 
on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the 
next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, 
was infinitely long. 

He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts 
of an hour back, but also the need of forgetting them alto- 
gether. And, in nearing the Lessingstrasse, he followed an im- 
pulse to go to Ephie, and to let her merry laugh wipe out the 
last traces of his ill-humour. 

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting- 
room, and though Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, con- 
versation languished. Ephie was sent for, but did not come, 
and Maurice was beginning to wish he had thought twice 
before calling, when her voice was heard in the passage, and, 
a moment later, she burst into the room, with her arms full of 
lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been bought 
early that morning at the flower-market, by one of their fellow- 
boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him, 
held up her scented burden, and was not content till he had 
buried his face in it. 

“Isn’t it just sweet?” she cried, holding it high for all to 
see. “ And the very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice, 
again, put your face right down into the middle of it — like 
that.” 

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his 
head, but Johanna reproved her sister, * 


94 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Don’t be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never 
seen lilac before.” 

“ Well, neither I have — not such lilac as this, and Maurice 
hasn’t either,” answered Ephie. “You shall smell it too, old 
Joan ! ” — and in spite of Johanna’s protests, she forced her 
sister also to sink her face in the fragrant white and purple 
blossoms. But then she left them lying on the table, and it 
was Johanna who put them in water. 

Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, 
and Johanna went out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat 
side by side on the sofa, and he helped her to distinguish chords 
of the seventh, and watched her make, in her music-book, the 
big, tailless notes, at which she herself was always hugely 
tickled, they reminded her so of eggs. But on this particular 
evening, she was not in a studious mood, and book, pencil and 
india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open ; 
the air that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of 
the room was heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from 
one of the vases, and was playing with it; and when Maurice 
chid her for thoughtlessly destroying it, she stuck the pieces 
in her hair. Not content with this, she also put bits behind 
Maurice’s ears, and tried to twist one in the piece of hair that 
fell on his forehead. Having thus bedizened them, she leaned 
back, and, with her hands clasped behind her head, began to 
tease the young man. A little bird, it seemed, had whispered 
her any number of interesting things about Madeleine and 
Maurice, and she had stored them all up. Now, she repeated 
them, with a charming impertinence, and was so provoking 
that, in laughing exasperation, Maurice took her fluffy, flower- 
bedecked head between his hands, and stopped her lips with 
two sound kisses. 

He acted impulsively, without reflecting, but, as soon as it 
was done, he felt a curious sense of satisfaction, which had 
nothing to do with Ephie, and was like a kind of unconscious 
revenge taken on some one else. He was not, however, pre- 
pared for the effect of his hasty deed. Ephie turned scarlet, 
and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the blossoms fell 
from her hair at once, stamped her foot. 

“Maurice Guest! How dare you!” she cried angrily, and, 
to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her 
eyes. 

He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was 
consequently dumfounded ; he could not believe, after the 


MAURICE GUEST 


95 

direct provocation she had given him, that his crime had been 
so great. 

“ But Ephie dear! ” he protested. “ I had no idea, upon 
my word I hadn’t, that you would take it like this. What’s 
the matter? It was nothing. Don’t cry. I’m a brute.” 

“Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you — 
never! ” said Ephie, and then she began to cry in earnest. 

He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, 
wiped away her tears with his own handkerchief. In vain did 
he beg her to tell him why she was so vexed. To all he said, 
she only shook her head, and answered: “You had no right 
to do it.” 

He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but 
at least a quarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in 
comforting her, and even then, she remained more subdued 
than usual. But when Maurice had gone, and she had dropped 
the scattered sprays of lilac out of the window on his head, 
she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, and dropped 
a curtsy to herself in the looking-glass. 

“ Him, too! ” she said aloud. 

She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for 
between these two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and 
unsuspected secret. 

And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for 
still a little why she should have been so disproportionately 
angry; but not for long; for, when he was not actually with 
Ephie, he was not given to thinking much about her. Besides, 
from there, he went straight to the latter half of an Abendun - 
terhaltung, to hear Fiirst play Brahms’ Variations on a Theme 
by Handel . 


VIII 


That night he had a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was 
in a garden, where nothing but lilac grew — grew with a 
luxuriance he could not have believed possible, and on fantastic 
bushes: there were bushes like steeples and bushes smaller than 
himself, big and little, broad and slender, but all were of lilac, 
and in flower — an extravagant profusion of white and purple 
blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and took an eager 
step forward; but, before he could reach the nearest bush, he 
saw that it had been an illusion: the bush was stripped and 
bare, and the rest were bare as well. “You’re too late. It 
has all been gathered,” he heard a voice say, and at this mo- 
ment, he saw Ephie at the end of a long alley of bushes, com- 
ing towards him, her arms full of lilac. She smiled and nodded 
to him over it, and he heard her laugh, but when she was 
half-way down the path, he discovered his mistake: it was not 
Ephie but Louise. She came slowly forward, her laden arms 
outstretched, and he would have given his life to be able to 
advance and to take what she offered him; but he could not 
stir, could not lift hand or foot, and his tongue clove to 
the roof of his mouth. Her steps grew more hesitating, she 
seemed hardly to move; and then, just as she reached the spot 
where he stood, he found that it was not she after all, but 
Madeleine, who laughed at his disappointment and said: “ I’m 
not offended, remember!” — The revulsion of feeling was 
too great; he turned away, without taking the flowers she 
held out to him — and awoke. 

This dream was present to him all the morning, like a 
melody that haunts and recalls. But he worked more labo- 
riously than usual ; for he was aggrieved with himself for having 
idled away the previous afternoon, and then, too, Fiirst’s playing 
had made a profound impression on him. In vigorous imita- 
tion, he sat down to the piano again, after a hasty dinner 
snatched in the neighbourhood; but as he was only playing 
scales, he propped open before him a little volume of Goethe’s 
poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales to 
the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the 
poems he liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped play- 
ing and held the book in both hands. 

He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was 
96 


MAURICE GUEST 


97 

unceremoniously opened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way 
he adopted when in a rosy mood. Maurice made a movement 
to conceal his book, merely in order to avoid the explanation 
he knew must follow ; but it was too late ; Dove had espied it. 
He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremely 
astonished to find Maurice “ still at it,” but much more so to 
see a book open before him ; and he vented his surprise loudly 
and wordily. 

“ Liszt used to read the newspaper,” said Maurice, for the 
sake of saying something. He had swung round in the piano- 
chair, and he yawned as he spoke, without attempting to dis- 
guise it. 

“Why, yes, of course, why not?” agreed Dove cordially, 
afraid lest he had seemed discouraging. “Why not, indeed? 
For those who can do it. I wish I could. But will you believe 
me, Guest ” — here he seated himself, and settled into an atti- 
tude for talking, one hand inserted between his crossed knees — 
“ will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult business 
to read at all? — at any time. I find it too stimulating, too 
anregendy don’t you know? I assure you, for weeks now, I 
have been trying to read Past and Present , and have not yet 
got beyond the first page. It gives one so much to think about, 
opens up so many new ideas, that I stop myself and say: ‘ Old 
fellow, that must be digested.’ This, I see, is poetry ” — he ran 
quickly and disparagingly through Maurice’s little volume, and 
laid it down again. “ I don’t care much for poetry myself, 
or for novels either. There’s so much in life worth knowing 
that is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all 
know, fact is stranger than fiction.” 

They spoke also of Fiirst’s performance the evening before, 
and Dove gave it its due, although he could not conceal his 
opinion that Fiirst’s star would ultimately pale before that of 
a new-comer to the town, a late addition to the list of Schwarz’s 
pupils, whom he, Dove, had been “ putting up to things a 
bit.” This was a “ Manchester man ” and former pupil of 
Halle’s, and it would certainly not be long before he set the 
place in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where 
he had been permitted to sit and hear him practise finger- 
exercises. 

“ A touch like velvet,” declared Dove. “ And a stretch ! — I 
have never seen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an 
eleventh, more easily than we do an octave.” 

The object of Dove’s visit was, it transpired, to propose that 


MAURICE GUEST 


98 

Maurice should accompany him that evening to the theatre, 
where Die W alkiire was to be performed ; and as, on this day, 
Dove had reasons for seeing the world through rose-coloured 
glasses, he suggested, out of the fulness of his heart, that they 
should also invite Madeleine to join them. Maurice was noth- 
ing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so, though it 
was not quite three o’clock, they went together to the Mozart - 
strasse. 

They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was 
strewn with closely written sheets. This was mail-day for 
America, she explained, and begged the young men to excuse 
her finishing an important letter to an American journalist, 
with whom she had once “ chummed up ” on a trip to Italy. 

“ One never knows when these people may be of use to one,” 
she was accustomed to say. 

Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to 
the others, she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she 
smiled in a significant way. 

“ You should have stayed, my son. Some one came, after 
all.” 

Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had 
seized the opportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, 
and did not seem to hear. 

She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; 
she had thought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked 
her to come to hear her play in EnsemblespieL 

“ However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden 
are to sing; it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one 
is to be there,” she said laughingly to Dove, “ or you would 
not be of the party.” 

But Dove only smiled and looked sly. 

Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the 
leading motives on which the W alkiire was built up ; and Dove, 
having hummed, strummed and whistled all those he knew 
by heart, settled down to a discourse on the legitimacy and de- 
velopment of the motive, and especially in how far it was to 
be considered a purely intellectual implement. He spoke with 
the utmost good-nature, and was so unconscious of being a 
bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine, how- 
ever, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a 
“Really!” “How extraordinary!” “You don’t say so!” 
among his abstruse remarks. But her sarcasm was lost on 
Dove; and even if he had noticed it, he would only have 


MAURICE GUEST 


99 

smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humoured easily to 
take offence. 

It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his 
information; he was never seen to read, and there was little 
theorising about art, little but the practical knowledge of it, 
in the circles to which he belonged. But just as he went about 
picking up small items of gossip, so he also gathered in stray 
scraps of thought and information, and being by nature en- 
dowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing that he had 
once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker’s gift of 
neatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other 
people, of connecting them, and giving them a varnish of 
originality. 

“ By no means a fool,” Madeleine was in the habit of saying 
of him. “ He would be easier to deal with if he were.” 

Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and 
Wagner’s forerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his 
brain. But he had only just compared the individual motives 
to the lettered ribbons that issue from the mouths of the figures 
in medieval pictures, and began to hint at the idee fixe of Ber- 
lioz, when he w’as interrupted by a knock at the door. 

“Herein!” cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the 
sight of the person who opened the door, Maurice involun- 
tarily started up from his chair, and taking his stand behind 
it, held the back of it firmly with both hands, in self-defence. 

It was Louise. 

On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the 
door-handle still in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile 
at Madeleine, raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line 
of white between her lips. 

“ May I come in? ” she asked, with her head a little on one 
side. 

“ Why, of course you know you may,” said Madeleine with 
some asperity. 

And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at 
which they had been sitting; but before anything further could 
be said, she raised her arms to catch up a piece of hair which 
had fallen loose on her neck. The young men were standing, 
waiting to greet her, Maurice still behind his chair; but she 
did not hurry on their account, or “ just on their account did 
not hurry,” as Madeleine mentally remarked. 

Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To 
their eyes, she appeared to be very simply dressed ; it was 


100 


MAURICE GUEST 


only Madeleine who appreciated the cost and care of this 
seeming simplicity. She wore a plain, close-fitting black dress, 
of a smooth, shiny stuff, which obeyed and emphasised the 
lines and outlines of her body; and, as she stood, with her 
arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, they could 
see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise and 
fall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, 
with feathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows 
on her face, and made her eyes seem darker than ever. 

Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands 
with Dove, and Dove — to Madeleine’s diversion and Maurice’s 
intense disgust — introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She 
looked full at the latter, and held out her hand ; but before he 
could take it, she withdrew it again, and put both it and her 
left hand behind her back. 

“ No, no,” she said. “ I mustn’t shake hands with you 
to-day. To-day is Friday. And to give one’s hand for the 
first time on a Friday would bring bad luck — to you, if not 
to me.” 

She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, 
having let his outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled 
rather foolishly. She did not seem to notice his discomfiture; 
turning to Madeleine, she began to speak of a piece of music 
she wished to borrow; and then Maurice had a chance of 
observing her at his ease, and of listening to her voice, in which 
he heard all manner of impossible things. But while Made- 
leine, with Dove’s assistance, was looking through a pile of 
music, Louise came suddenly up to him and said: “You are 
not offended with me, are you?” She had a low voice, with 
a childish cadence in it, which touched him like a caress. 

“Offended? I with you?” He meant to laugh, but his 
voice shook. 

She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, 
but also at the tone in which they were said ; and the strange, 
fervent gaze bent on her by this man whom she saw for 
the first time in her life, confused her and made her uneasy. 
Slowly and coldly she turned away, but Madeleine, who was 
charitably occupying Dove as long as she could, did not take 
any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stare 
at her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey 
sky, and said, with a shudder: “What a day for June!” 

All eyes followed hers, Maurice’s with the rest; but almost 
instantly he brought them back again to her face. 


MAURICE GUEST 


IOI 


“Louise is a true Southerner,” said Madeleine; “and is 
wretched if there’s a cloud in the sky.” 

Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. “ It’s not 
quite as bad as that,” she said; and then, although herself not 
clear why she should have answered these searching eyes, she 
added, looking at Maurice: “ I come from Australia.” 

If she had said she was a visitant from another world, 
Maurice would not, at the moment, have felt much surprise; 
but on hearing the name of this distant land, on which he 
would probably never set foot, a sense of desolation overcame 
him. He realised anew, with a pang, what an utter stranger 
he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country, he 
knew and could know nothing. 

“ That is very far away,” he said, speaking out of this feel- 
ing, and then was vexed with himself for having done so. 
His words sounded foolish as they lingered on in the stillness 
that followed them, and would, he believed, lay him open to 
Madeleine’s ridicule. But he had not much time in which to 
repent of them ; the music had been found, and she was going 
again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she had an 
engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, through- 
out, had kept in the background, looked at his watch and took 
up his hat: he had previously offered, unopposed, to do the 
long wait outside the theatre, which was necessary when one 
had no tickets, and now it was time to go. But when Louise 
heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved hand on 
Dove’s arm. 

“ The very thing for such a night ! ” 

They all said “ A uf Wiedersehen! " to one another; she did 
not offer to shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint 
hope that it was on his account. He opened the window, 
leant out, and watched them, until they went round the cor- 
ner of the street. 

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he 
turned, she was grave. She did not make any reference to 
what had passed, nor did she, as he feared she would, put 
questions to him: instead, she showed him a song of Krafft’s, 
and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. He grate- 
fully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. 
For the song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally 
in c sharp minor; but it was black with accidentals, and 
passed through many keys before it came to a close in D flat 
major. Besides this, the right hand had much hard passage- 


102 


MAURICE GUEST 


work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated bass 
of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand. 

“ Lieblos und ohne Gott auf einer Haide ” sang Madeleine 
on the high f sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither 
his wits nor his fingers, began blunderingly, could not right 
himself, and after scrambling through a few bars, came to a 
dead stop, and let his hands fall from the keys. 

“ Not to-day, Madeleine.” 

She laughed good-naturedly. “ Very well — not to-day. One 
shouldn’t ask you to believe to-day that die ganze Welt ist zum 
Verzweifeln traurig ." 

While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he 
stood with his hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told 
himself once more what he found it impossible to believe: that 
he was going to see Louise again in a few hours; and not only 
to see her, but to speak to her, to be at her side. And when 
his jubilation at this had subsided, he went over in memory all 
that had just taken place. His first impression, he could 
afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment : 
that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, 
whom he had called by her name, that the real she was a 
stranger to him. Everything about her had been different from 
what he had expected — her voice, her smile, her gestures — 
and in the first moments of their meeting, he had been chill 
with fear, lest — lest . . . even yet he did not venture to 
think out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness 
over, he had found her more charming, more desirable, than 
even he had hoped ; and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure 
from him as he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle 
— no touch of coquetry, no insincerely spoken word — had 
marred the perfect impression of the whole. To know r her, 
to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to false 
slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp 
that the meeting had actually come to pass and w^as over: it 
had been so ordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in 
the world ; there had been no blast of trumpets, nor had any 
occult sympathy warned her that she was in the presence of 
one who had trembled for weeks at the idea of this moment — 
and again he leaned forward and gazed at the spot in the street, 
where she had disappeared from sight. He was filled with 
envy of Dove — this w^as the latter’s reward for his unfailing 
readiness to oblige others — and in fancy he saw Dove walking 
street after street at her side. 


MAURICE GUEST 


103 


In reality, the two parted from each other shortly after 
turning the first corner. 

On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt 
to take leave of his companion ; but, on this particular one, he 
was in the mood to be a little reckless. In the morning, he 
had received, with a delightful shock, his first letter from 
Ephie, a very frank, warmly written note, in which she relied 
on his great kindness to secure her, without fail — these words 
were deeply underscored — two places in the parquet of the 
theatre, for that evening’s performance. Not the letter alone, 
but also its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him, 
had touched Dove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the 
first to arrive at the box-office that morning, and, although 
he had not ventured, unasked, to take himself a seat beside 
the sisters, he was now living in the anticipation of promenade 
ing the foyer with them in the intervals between the acts, and 
of afterwards escorting them home. 

On leaving Louise, he made for the theatre with a swinging 
stride — had he been in the country, stick in hand, he would 
have slashed off the heads of innumerable green and flowering 
things. As it was, he whistled — an unusual thing for him to 
do in the street — then assumed the air of a man hard pressed 
for time. Gradually the passers-by began to look at him with 
the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by accident, 
one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised 
for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that 
was responsible for Dove’s state of mind, and for the height- 
ening and radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go 
early to the theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least 
three-quarters of an hour, in order that the others, coming 
considerably later, might still have a chance of gaining their 
favourite seats: in doing this, Dove was not actuated by a 
wholly unselfish motive, but by the more complicated one, 
which, consciously or unconsciously, was present beneath all 
the friendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people. He 
was never more content with himself, and with the world at 
large, than when he felt that he was essential to the comfort 
and well-being of some of his fellow-mortals; than when he, 
so to speak, had a finger in the pie of their existence. It en- 
gendered a sense of importance, gave life fulness and variety; 
and this far outweighed the trifling inconveniences such well- 
doing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For, in his mild 
way, Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania — of a lust for power. 


104 


MAURICE GUEST 


Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her 
room in the Briiderstrasse , but only to throw a hasty look 
round. It was just as she had expected: although it was long 
past the appointed time, he was not there. At a flower-shop 
in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunch of many-coloured 
roses, and with these in her hands, went straight to where 
Schilsky lived. 

Mounting to the third floor of the house in the Talstrasse, 
she opened, without ceremony, the door of his room, which 
gave direct on the landing; but so' stealthily that the young 
man, who was sitting with his back to the door, did not 
hear her enter. Before he could turn, she had sprung forward, 
her arms were round his neck, and the roses under his nose. 
He drew his face away from their damp fragrance, but did 
not look up, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a 
tone of extreme bad temper: “What are you doing here, 
Lulu? What nonsense is this? For God’s sake, shut the 
door! ” 

She ruffled his hair with her lips. “ You didn’t come. 
And the day has seemed so long.” 

He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one 
hand, while, with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of 
music-paper that lay before him. “For a very good reason. 
I’ve had no time.” 

She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down 
on his knee, unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses 
on the bed. He put his arm round her to steady her, and as 
soon as he held her to him, his ill-temper was vanquished. 
He talked volubly of the instrumentation he was busy with. 
But she, who could point out almost every fresh note he put 
on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at work for more 
than a quarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of doubt 
and jealousy, such as she could never subdue, she asked: 
“ Were you practising as well? ” 

He took no notice of these words, and she did not trust her- 
self to say more, until, with his free hand, he began jotting 
again, making notes that were no bigger than pin-heads. Then 
she laid her hand on his. “ I haven’t seen you all day.” 

But he was too engrossed to listen. “ Look here,” he said 
pointing to a thick-sown bar. “ That gave me the deuce of a 
bother. While here ” — and now he explained to her, in detail, 
the properties of the tenor-tuba in B, and the bass-tuba in 
F, and the use to which he intended to put these instru- 


MAURICE GUEST 


105 


ments. She heard him with lowered eyes, lightly caressing 
the back of his hand with her finger-tips. But when he ceased 
speaking, she rubbed her cheek against his. 

“ It is enough for to-day. Lulu has been lonely.” 

Not one of his thoughts was with her, she saw that, as he 
answered: “ I must get this finished.” 

“ To-night?” 

“ If I can. You know well enough, Lulu, when I’m in 
the swing ” 

“ Yes, yes, I know. If only it wouldn’t always come, just 
when I want you most.” 

Her face lost its brightness; she rose from his knee and 
roamed about the room, watched from the wall by her pictured 
self. 

“ But is there ever a moment in the day when you don’t 
want me? You are never satisfied.” He spoke abstractedly, 
without interest in the answer she might make, and, relieved 
of her weight, leant forward again, while his fingers played 
some notes on the table. But when she began to let her hands 
stray over the loose papers and other articles that encumbered 
chairs, piano and washstand, he raised his head and watched 
her with a sharp eye. 

“For goodness’ sake, let those things alone, can’t you?” 
he said after he had borne her fidgeting for some time. 

“You have no secrets from me, I suppose?” She said it 
with her tenderest smile, but he scowled so darkly in reply that 
she went over to him again, to touch him with her hand. 
Standing behind him, with her fingers in his hair, she said: 
“ Just to-day I wanted you so much. This morning I was 
so depressed that I could have killed myself.” 

He turned his head, to give her a significant glance. 

“ Good reason for the blues, Lulu. I warned you. You 
want too much of everything. And can’t expect to escape 
a Kater” 

“Too much?” she echoed, quick to resent his words. 
“ Does it seem so to you ? Would days and days of happi- 
ness be too much after we have been separated for a week? 
— after Wednesday night? — after what you said to me yes- 
terday? ” 

“ Yesterday I was in the devil of a temper. Why rake up 
old scores? Now go home. Or at least keep quiet, and let 
me get something done.” 

He shook his head free of her caressing hand, and, worse 


io6 


MAURICE GUEST 


still, scratched the place where it had lain. She stood irreso- 
lute, not venturing to touch him again, looking hungrily at 
him. Her eyes fell on the piece of roeck, smooth, lightly 
browned, that showed between his hair and the low collar; 
and, in an uncontrollable rush of feeling, she stooped and kissed 
it. As he accepted the caress, without demur, she said: “ I 
thought of going to the theatre to-night, dear.” 

He was pleased and showed it. “ That’s right — it’s just 
what you need to cheer you up.” 

“ But I want you to come, too.” 

He struck the table with his fist. “ Good God, can’t you 
get it into your head that I want to work? ” 

She laughed, with ready bitterness. “ I should think I 
could. That’s nothing new. You are always busy when I 
ask you to do anything. You have time for everything and 
every one but me. If this were something you yourself wanted 
to do to-night, neither your work nor anything else would 
stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be ignored. 
Have you forgotten already that I only came home the day 
before yesterday?” 

He looked sullen. “ Now don’t make a scene, Lulu. It 
doesn’t do a whit of good.” 

“ A scene ! ” she cried, seizing on his words. “ Whenever 
I open my lips now, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have 
done, Eugeni Why do you treat me like this? Are you 
beginning to care less for me? The first evening, the very 
first, I get home, you won’t stay with me — you haven’t even 
kept that evening free for me — and when I ask you about it, 
and try to get at the truth — oh, do you remember all the cruel 
things you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them 
as long as I live. And now, when I ask you to come out with 
me — it is such a little thing — oh, I can’t sit at home this even- 
ing, Eugen, I can’t do it! If you really loved me, you would 
understand.” 

She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. 
Schilsky, who had again made believe during this outburst to 
be absorbed in his work, cast a look of mingled anger and dis- 
comfort at the prostrate figure, and for some few moments, 
succeeded in continuing his occupation with a show of in- 
difference; but as, in place of abating, her sobs grew more 
heart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and finally he 
dropped pencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of 
annoyance went over to the bed. 


MAURICE GUEST 


107 


“ Lulu,” he said persuasively. “ Come, Lulu,” and bend- 
ing over her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and tried 
to force her to rise. She resisted him with all her might, 
but he was the stronger, and presently he had her on her feet, 
where, with her head on his shoulder, she wept out the rest of 
her tears. He held her to him, and although his face above 
her was still dark, did what he could to soothe her. He could 
never bear to see or to hear a woman cry, and this loud pas- 
sionate weeping, so careless of anything but itself, racked his 
nerves, and filled him with an uneasy wrath against invisible 
powers. 

“Don’t cry, darling, don’t cry!” he said again and again. 

Gradually she grew calmer, and he, too, was still; but 
when her sobs were hushed, and she was clinging to him in 
silence, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her back 
from him, that he might look at her. His face wore a stub- 
born expression, which she knew, and which made him appear 
years older than he was. 

“ Now listen to me, Lulu,” he said. “ When you behave 
in this way again, you won’t see me afterwards for a week — 
I promise you that, and you know I keep my word. Instead 
of being glad that I am in the right mood and can get some- 
thing done, you come here — which you know I have repeatedly 
forbidden you to do — and make a fool of yourself like this. 
I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay 
on Wednesday night — w T hy didn’t you time your arrival bet- 
ter? But it’s just like you. You would throw the whole of 
one’s future into the balance for the sake of a whim. Yester- 
day I was in a beast of a temper — I’ve admitted it. But 
that was made all right last night; and no one but you would 
drag it up again.” 

He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only some- 
times gave way, when the injustice she was guilty of forced 
itself upon him. “ Now, like a good girl, go home — go to the 
theatre and enjoy yourself. I don’t mind you being happy 
without me. At least, go ! — under any circumstances you ought 
not to be here. How often have I told you that!” His 
moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew 
so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked 
that he was almost unintelligible. “ You won’t have a rag of 
reputation left.” 

“ If I don’t care, why should you? ” She felt for his hand. 

But he turned his back. “ I won’t have it, I tell you. You 


108 MAURICE GUEST 

know what the student underneath said the last time he met 
you on the stair.” 

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from burst- 
ing anew into sobs, and there was a brief silence — he stood 
at the window, gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall — 
before she said: “Don’t speak to me like that. I’m going — 
now — this moment. I will never do it again — never again.” 

As he only mumbled disbelief at this, she put her arms 
round his neck, and raised her tear-stained face to his: her 
eyes were blurred and sunken with crying, and her lips were 
white. He knew every line of her face by heart; he had 
known it in so many moods, and under so many conditions, 
that he was not as sensitive to its influence as he had once 
been; and he stood unwilling, with his hands in his pockets, 
while she clung to him and let him feel her weight. But he 
was very fond of her, and, as she continued mutely to implore 
forgiveness — she, Lulu, his Lulu, whom every one envied him 
— his hasty anger once more subsided; he put his arms round 
her and kissed her. She nestled in against him, over-happy 
at his softening, and for some moments they stood like this, in 
the absolute physical agreement that always overcame their 
differences. In his arms, with her head on his shoulder, she 
smoothed back his hair; and while she gazed, with adoring 
eyes, at this face that constituted her world, she murmured 
words of endearment; and all the unsatisfactory day was an- 
nulled by these few moments of perfect harmony. 

It was he who loosened his grasp. “ Now, it’s all right, isn’t 
it? No more tears. But you really must be off, or you’ll 
be late.” 

“Yes. And you?” 

He had taken up his violin and was tuning it, preparatory 
to playing himself back into the mood she had dissipated. He 
ran his fingers up and down, tried flageolets, and slashed chords 
across the strings. 

But when she had sponged her face and pinned on her 
hat, he said, in response to her beseeching eyes, which, as so 
often before, made the granting of this one request, a touch- 
stone of his love for her : “ Look here, Lulu, if I possibly can, 
I’ll drop in at the end of the first act. Look out for me then, 
in the foyer ” 

And with this, she was forced to be content. 


IX 


When, shortly after five o’clock, Madeleine and Maurice 
arrived at the New Theatre, they took their places at the end 
of a queue which extended to the corner of the main build- 
ing; and before they had stood very long, so many fresh people 
had been added to the line, that it had lengthened out until 
it all but reached the arch of the theatre-cafe. Dove was well 
to the fore, and would be one of the first to gain the box- 
office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before the 
doors opened ; and Maurice borrowed his companion’s text- 
book, and read studiously, to acquaint himself with the plot 
of the opera. Madeleine took out Wolzogen’s Fuhrer, with 
the intention of brushing up her knowledge of the motives; 
but, before she had finished a page, she had grown so inter- 
ested in what two people behind her were saying that she 
turned and took part in the conversation. 

The broad expanse of the Augustusplatz facing the theatre 
was bare and sunny. A policeman arrived, and ordered the 
queue in a straighter line; then he strolled up and down, 
stroking and smoothing his white gloves. More people came 
hurrying over the square to the theatre, and ranged themselves 
at the end of the tail. As the hands of the big clock on the 
post-office neared the quarter past five, a kind of tremor ran 
through the waiting line; it gathered itself more compactly 
together. One clock after another boomed the single stroke; 
sounds came from within the building; the burly policeman 
placed himself at the head of the line. There was a noise 
of drawn bolts and grating locks, and after a moment’s sus- 
pense, light shone out and the big door was flung open. 

“ Gent-ly ! ” shouted the policeman, but the leaders of the 
queue charged with a will, and about a dozen people had 
dashed forward, before he could throw down a stemming arm, 
on which those thus hindered leaned as on a bar of iron. 
Madeleine and Maurice were to the front of the second batch. 
And the arm down, in they flew also, Madeleine leading, 
through the swing-doors at the side of the corridor, up the 
steep, wooden stairs, one flight after another, higher and 
higher, round and round, past one, two, three, tiers — a mad 

109 


no MAURICE GUEST 

race, which ended almost in the arms of the gate-keeper at 
the topmost gallery. 

Dove was waiting with the tickets, and they easily secured 
the desired places; not in the middle of the gallery, where, as 
Madeleine explained while she tucked her hat and jacket under 
the seat, the monstrous chandelier hid the greater part of the 
stage, but at the right-hand side, next the lattice that sepa- 
rated the seats at seventy-five from those at fifty pfennigs. 

“ This is first-rate for seeing,” said Maurice. 

Madeleine laughed. “ You see too much — that’s the 
trouble. Wait till you’ve watched the men running about the 
bottom of the Rhine, working the cages the Rhine-daughters 
swim in.” 

As yet, with the exception of the gallery, the great building 
was empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken 
well of the orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats 
on the ground floor far below, was still encased in white wrap- 
pings — here and there an attendant began to peel them off. 
Maurice, poring over his book, had to strain his eyes to read, 
and this, added to the difficulty of the German, and his own 
sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon give up the 
attempt, and attend wholly to what Madeleine was saying. 

It was hot already, and the air of the crowded gallery was 
permeated with various, pungent odours: some people behind 
them were eating a strong-smelling sausage, and the man on 
the other side of the lattice reeked of cheap tobacco. When 
they had been in their seats for about a quarter of an hour, 
the lights throughout the theatre went up, and, directly after- 
wards, the lower tiers and the ground floor were sprinkled 
with figures. One by one, the members of the orchestra 
dropped in, turned up the lamps attached to their stands, and 
taking their instruments, commenced to tune and flourish ; 
and soon stray motives and scraps of motives came mounting 
up, like lost birds, from wind and strings; the man of the 
drums beat a soft rattatoo, and applied his ear to the skins of 
his instruments. Now the players were in their seats, waiting 
for the conductor; late-comers in the audience entered with an 
air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, and the 
stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runic 
scroll. A delightful sense of expectation pervaded the theatre. 

Maurice had more than once looked furtively at his watch; 
and, at every fresh noise behind him, he turned his head — 
turned so often that the people in the back seats grew sus- 
picious, and whispered to one another. Madeleine had drawn 


MAURICE GUEST 


iii 


his attention to everything worth noticing; and now, with her 
opera-glass at her eyes, she pointed out to him people whom he 
ought to know. Dove, having eaten a ham-roll at the buffet 
on the stair, had ever since sat with his opera-glass glued to his 
face, and only at this moment did he remove it with a sigh 
of relief. 

“ There they are,” said Madeleine, and showed Maurice 
the place in the parquet , where Ephie and Johanna Cayhill 
were sitting. But the young man only glanced cursorily in 
the direction she indicated ; he was wondering why Louise did 
not come — the time had all but gone. He could not bring 
himself to ask, partly from fear of being disappointed, partly 
because, now that he knew her, it was harder than before to 
bring her name over his lips. But the conductor had entered 
by the orchestra-door; he stood speaking to the first violinist, 
and the next moment w'ould climb into his seat. The players 
held their instruments in readiness — and a question trembled 
on Maurice’s tongue. But at this very moment, a peremptory 
fanfare rang out behind the scene, and Madeleine said : “ The 
sword motive, Maurice,” to add in the same breath: “There’s 
Louise.” 

He looked behind him. “ Where? ” 

She nudged him. “ Not here, you silly,” she said in a loud 
whisper. “ Surely you haven’t been expecting her to come up 
here ? Parquet , fourth row from the front, between two 
women in plaid dresses — oh, now the lights have gone.” 

“ Ssh ! ” said at least half a dozen people about them : her 
voice was audible above the growling of the thunder. 

Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the 
darkness into which the theatre had been plunged, travelled 
his eyes up and down the row she named — naturally without 
success. When the curtains parted and disclosed the stage, it 
was a little lighter, but not light enough for him ; he could not 
find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids in the row; 
and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. 
To know that she was there was enough to distract him; 
and he was conscious of the music and action of the opera 
merely as something that was going on outside him, until 
he received another sharp nudge from Madeleine on his right- 
hand side. 

“ You’re not attending. And this is the only act you’ll be 
able to make anything of.” 

He gave a guilty start, and turned to the stage, where 


m 


MAURICE GUEST 


Hunding had just entered to a pompous measure. In his 
endeavours to understand what followed, he was aided by 
his companions, who prompted him alternately. But Sieg- 
mund’s narration seemed endless, and his thoughts wandered 
in spite of himself. 

“ Listen to this,” said Dove of a sudden. “ It’s one of the 
few songs Wagner has written.” He swayed his head from 
side to side, to the opening bars of the love-song; and Maurice 
found the rhythm so inviting that he began keeping time with 
his foot, to the indignation of a music-loving policeman be- 
hind them, who gave an angry : “ Pst ! ” 

“ One of the finest love-scenes that was ever written,” whis- 
pered Madeleine in her decisive way. And Maurice believed 
her. From this point on, the music took him up and carried 
him with it; and when the great doors burst open, and let in 
the spring night, he applauded vigorously with the rest, keep- 
ing it up so long that Dove disappeared, and Madeleine grew 
impatient. 

“ Let us go. The interval is none too long.” 

They went downstairs to the first floor of the building, and 
entered a long, broad, brilliantly lighted corridor. Here the 
majority of the audience was walking round and round, in a 
procession of twos and threes; groups of people also stood at 
both ends and looked on; others went in and out of the doors 
that opened on the great loggia. Madeleine and Maurice 
joined the perambulating throng, Madeleine bowing and smil- 
ing to her acquaintances, Maurice eagerly scanning the faces 
that came towards him on the opposite side. 

Suddenly, a stout gentleman, in gold spectacles, kid gloves 
tight to bursting, and a brown frock coat, over the amplitude 
of which was slung an opera-glass, started up from a corner, 
and, seizing both Madeleine’s hands, worked them up and 
down. At the same time, he made a ceremonious little speech 
about the length of time that had elapsed since their last meet- 
ing, and paid her a specious compliment on the taste she dis- 
played in being present at so serious an opera. Madeleine 
laughed, and said a few words in her hard, facile German: 
the best was yet to come; “ die Moran ” was divine as Briinn- 
hilde. Having bowed and said: “ Lohse ” to Maurice, the 
stranger took no further notice of him, but, drawing Made- 
leine’s hand through his arm, in a manner half gallant, half 
paternal, invited her to take ices with him, at the adjoining 
buffet. 


MAURICE GUEST 


113 

Maurice remained standing in a corner, scrutinising those 
who passed him. He exchanged a few words with one of his 
companions of the dinner-table — -a small-bodied, big-headed 
chemical student called Dickensey, who had a reputation for 
his cynicism. He had just asked Maurice whether Siegmund 
reminded him more of a pork-butcher or a prizefighter, and 
had offered to lay a bet that he would never attend a perfor- 
mance in this theatre when the doors of Hunding’s house 
flew open, or the sword lit up, at exactly the right moment — 
when Maurice caught sight of Dove and the Cayhills. He 
excused himself, and went to join them. 

Not one of the three looked happy. Johanna was un- 
speakably bored and did not conceal it; she gazed with con- 
tempt on the noisy, excited crowd. Dove was not only burn- 
ing to devote himself to Ephie; he had also got himself into a 
dilemma, and was at this moment doing his best to explain the 
first act of the opera to Johanna, without touching on the 
relationship of the lovers. His face was red with the effort, 
and he hailed Maurice’s appearance as a welcome diversion. 
But Ephie, too, greeted him with pleasure, and touching his 
arm, drew him back, so that they dropped behind the others. 
She was coquettishly dressed this evening, and looked so charm- 
ing that people drew one another’s attention to die reizende 
kleine Englanderin. But Maurice soon discovered that she 
was out of spirits, and disposed to be cross. For fear lest he 
was the offender, he asked if she had quite forgiven him, and 
if they were good friends again. “ Oh, I had forgotten all 
about it ! ” But, a moment after, she was grave and quiet — 
altogether unlike herself. 

“Are you not enjoying yourself, Ephie?” 

“ No, I’m not. I think it’s stupid. And they’re all so 
fat.” < 

This referred to the singers, and was indisputable; Maurice 
could only agree with her, and try to rally her. Meanwhile, 
he continued surreptitiously to scour the hall, with an ever- 
growing sense of disappointment. 

Then, suddenly, among those who were passing in the op- 
posite direction, he saw Louise. In a flash he understood why 
he had not been able to find her in the row of seats: he had 
looked for her in a black dress, and she was all in white, with 
heavy white lace at her neck. Her companion was an English- 
man called Eggis, of whom it was rumoured that he had 
found it advisable abruptly to leave his native land: here, he 


MAURICE GUEST 


1 14 

made a precarious living by journalism, and by doing odd 
jobs for the consulate. In spite of his shabby clothes, this 
man, prematurely bald, with dissipated features, had polished 
manners and an air of refinement; and, thoroughly enjoying 
his position, he was talking to his companion with vivacity. 
It was plain that Louise was only half listening to him; with 
a faint, absent smile on her lips, she, too, restlessly scanned 
the crowd. 

They all caught sight of Schilsky at the same moment, and 
Maurice, on whom nothing was lost, saw as well the quick 
look that passed between Louise and him, and its immediate 
effect: Louise flashed into a smile, and was full of gracious 
attentiveness to the little man at her side. 

Schilsky leant against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, 
his conspicuous head well back. On entering the foyer, he 
had been pounced on by Miss Jensen. The latter, showily 
dressed in a large-striped stuff, had in tow a fellow-singer 
about half her own size, whom she was rarely to be seen with- 
out; but, on this occasion, the wan little American stood dis- 
consolately apart, for Miss Jensen was paying no attention to 
him. In common with the rest of her sex, she had a weakness 
for Schilsky; and besides, on this evening, she needed spe- 
cially receptive ears, for she had been studying the role of 
Sieglinde, and was full of criticisms and objections. As Ephie 
and Maurice passed them, she nodded to the latter and said: 
“ Good evening, neighbour ! ” while Schilsky, seizing the 
chance, broke away, without troubling to excuse himself. Thus 
deserted, Miss Jensen detained Maurice, and so he lost the 
couple he wanted to keep in sight. But at the first pause in 
the conversation, Ephie plucked at his sleeve. 

“ Let us go out on the balcony.” 

They went outside on the loggia, where groups of people 
stood refreshing themselves in the mild evening air, w T hich 
was pleasant with the scent of lilac. Ephie led the way, and 
Maurice followed her to the edge of the parapet, where they 
leaned against one of the pillars. Here, he found himself 
again in the neighbourhood of the other two. Louise, leaning 
both hands on the stone-work, was looking out over the square ; 
but Schilsky, lounging as before, with his legs crossed, his 
hands in his pockets, had his back to it, and was letting his 
eyes range indifferently over the faces before him. As Maurice 
and Ephie came up, he yawned long and heartily, and, in so 
doing, showed all his defective teeth. Furtively watching 


MAURICE GUEST 


them, Maurice saw him lean towards his companion and say 
something to her; at the same time, he touched with his finger- 
tips the lace she wore at the front of her dress. The familiarity 
of the action grated on Maurice, and he turned away his head. 
When he looked again, a moment or two later, he was dis- 
turbed anew. Louise was leaning forward, still in the same 
position, but Schilsky was plainly conversing by means of signs 
with some one else. He frowned, half closed his eyes, shook 
his head, and, as if by chance, laid a finger on his lips. 

“ Who’s he doing that to ? ” Maurice asked himself, and 
followed the direction of the other’s eyes, which were fixed 
on the corner where he and Ephie stood. He turned, and 
looked from side to side; and, as he did this, he caught a 
glimpse of Ephie’s face, which made him observe her more 
nearly: it was flushed, and she was gazing hard at Schilsky. 
With a rush of enlightenment, Maurice looked back at the 
young man, but this time Schilsky saw that he was being 
watched ; stooping, he said a nonchalant word to his com- 
panion, and thereupon they went indoors again. All this 
passed like a flash, but it left, none the less, a disagreeable 
impression, and before Maurice had recovered from it, Ephie 
said : “ Let us go in.” 

They pressed towards the door. 

“ I’m poor company to-night, Ephie,” he said, feeling al- 
ready the need of apologising to her for his ridiculous sus- 
picion. “ But you are quiet, too.” He glanced down at her 
as he spoke, and again was startled; her expression was set and 
defiant, but her baby lips trembled. “What’s the matter? 
I believe you are angry with me for being so silent. ” 

“ I guess it doesn’t make any difference to me whether you 
talk or not,” she replied pettishly. “ But I think it’s just as 
dull and stupid as it can be. I wish I hadn’t come.” 

“ Would you like to go home? ” 

“ Of course I wouldn’t. I’ll stop now I’m here — oh, can’t 
we go quicker? How slow you are! Do make haste.” 

He thought he heard tears in her voice, and looked at her 
in perplexity. While he contemplated getting her into a quiet 
corner and making her tell him truthfully what the matter 
was, they came upon Madeleine, who had been searching 
everywhere for Maurice. Madeleine had more colour in her 
cheeks than usual, and, in the pleasing consciousness that she 
was having a successful evening, she brought her good spirits 
to bear on Ephie, who stood fidgeting beside them. 


MAURICE GUEST 


116 

“ You look nice, child,” she remarked in her patronising 

way. “ Your dress is very pretty. But why is your face so 

red? One would think you had been crying.” 

Ephie, growing still redder, tossed her head. “ It’s no won- 
der, I’m sure. The theatre is as hot as an oven. But at least 
my nose isn’t red as well.” 

Madeleine was on the point of retorting, but at this mo- 
ment, the interval came to an end, and the electric bells 
rang shrilly. The people who were nearest the doors went 

out at once, upstairs and down. Among the first were 

Louise and Schilsky, the latter’s head as usual visible above 
every one else’s. 

“ I will go, too,” said Ephie hurriedly. “ No, don’t bother 
to come with me. I’ll find my way all right. I guess the 
others are in front.” 

“ There’s something wrong with that child to-night,” said 
Madeleine as she and Maurice climbed to the gallery. “ Pert 
little thing! But I suppose even such sparrow-brains have 
their troubles.” 

“ I suppose they have,” said Maurice. He had just realised 
that the longed-for interval was over, and with it more of the 
hopes he had nursed. 

Dove was already in his seat, eating another roll. He moved 
along to make room for them, but not a word was to be got 
out of him, and as soon as he had finished eating, he raised the 
opera-glass to his eyes again. Behind his back, Madeleine 
whispered a mischievous remark to Maurice, but the latter 
smiled wintrily in return. He had searched swiftly and thor- 
oughly up and down the fourth row of the parquet , only to 
find that Louise was not in it. This time there could be no 
doubt whatever; not a single white dress was in the row, and 
towards the middle a seat was vacant. They had gone home 
then; he would not see her again — and once more the pro- 
voking darkness enveloped the theatre. 

This second act had no meaning for him, and he found the 
various scenes intolerably long. Dove volunteered no further 
aid, and Madeleine’s explanations were insufficient; he was 
perplexed and bored, and when the curtains fell, joined in the 
applause merely to save appearances. The others rose, but he 
said he would not go downstairs; and when they had drawn 
back to let Dove push by and hurry away, Madeleine said 
she, too, would stay. However they would at least go into the 
corridor, where the air was better. After they had prome- 


MAURICE GUEST 


1 17 

naded several times up and down, they descended to a lower 
floor, and there, through a little half-moon window that gave 
on the foyer below, they watched the living stream which, 
underneath, was going round as before. Madeleine talked 
without a pause. 

“ Look at Dove ! ” She pointed him out as he went by with 
the two sisters. “ Did you ever see such a gloomy air? He 
might sit for Werther to-night. And oh, look, there’s Boehmer 
with his widow — see, the pretty fattish little woman. She’s 
over forty and has buried two husbands, but is crazy about 
Boehmer. They say she’s going to marry him, though he’s 
more than twenty years younger than she is.” 

At this juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky 
and Louise. He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and 
Madeleine understood it. She stopped her gossip to say: “ You 
thought she had gone, didn’t you? Probably she has only 
changed her seat. They do that sometimes — he hates parquet ** 
And, after a pause: “ How cross she looks! She’s evidently 
in a temper about something. I never saw people hide their 
feelings as badly as they do. It’s positively indecent.” 

Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below 
were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not 
exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned 
sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together 
more loosely than usual, while as for Louise — Maurice staring 
hard from his point of vantage could not have believed it pos- 
sible for her face to change in this way. She looked suddenly 
older, and very tired ; and her mobile mouth was hard. 

When, an hour later, after a tedious colloquy between 
Briinnhilde and Wotan, this long and disappointing evening 
came to an end, to the more human strains of the Feuerzauber, 
and they, the last of the gallery-audience to leave, had tramped 
down the wooden stairs, Maurice’s heart leapt to his throat 
to discover, as they turned the last bend, not only the two 
C'ayhills waiting for them, but also, a little distance further off, 
Louise. She stood there, in her white dress, with a thin scarf 
over her head. 

Madeleine was surprised too. “Louise! Is it you? And 
alone?” 

The girl did not respond. “ I want to borrow some money 
from you, Madeleine — about five or six marks,” she said, with- 
out smiling, in one of those colourless voices that preclude fur- 
ther questioning. 


1 1 8 


MAURICE GUEST 


Madeleine was not sure if she had more than a couple of 
marks in her purse, and confirmed this on looking through it 
under a lamp; but both young men put their hands in their 
pockets, and the required sum was made up. As they walked 
across the square, Louise explained. Dressed, and ready to 
start for the theatre, she had not been able to find her purse. 

“ I looked everywhere. And yet I had it only this morn- 
ing. At the last moment, I came down here to Markwald’s. 
He knows me; and he let me have the seats on trust. I said 
I would go in afterwards.” 

They waited outside the tobacconist’s, while she settled her 
debt. Before she came out again, Madeleine cast her eyes 
over the group, and, having made a rapid surmise, said gcod- 
naturedly to Johanna: “Well, I suppose we shall walk to- 
gether as far as we can. Shall you and I lead off ? ” 

Maurice had a sudden vision of bliss; but no sooner had 
Louise appeared again, with the shopman bowing behind her, 
then Ephie came round to his side, with a naive, matter-of- 
course air that admitted of no rebuff, and asked him to carry 
her opera-glass. Dove and Louise brought up the rear. 

But Dove had only one thought: to be in Maurice’s place. 
Ephie had behaved so strangely in the theatre; he had certainly 
done something to offend her, and, although he had more than 
once gone over his conduct of the past week, without finding 
any want of correctness on his part, whatever it was, he must 
make it good without delay. 

“ You know my friend Guest, I think,” he said at last, hav- 
ing racked his brains to no better result — not for the world 
would he have had his companion suspect his anxiety to leave 
her. “ He’s a clever fellow, a very clever fellow. Schwarz 
thinks a great deal of him. I wonder what his impressions 
of the opera were. This was his first experience of Wagner; 
it would be interesting to hear what he has to say.” 

Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove’s words made 
her smile. 

“ Let us ask him,” she said. 

They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And 
when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to 
Ephie’s side, Louise, left slightly to herself, called Maurice 
back to her. 

“ Mr. Guest, we want your opinion of the W alkure .” 

Confused to find her suddenly beside him, Maurice was still 
more disconcerted at the marked way in which she slackened 


MAURICE GUEST 


119 

her pace to let the other two get in front. Believing, too, 
that he heard a note of mockery in her voice, he coloured and 
hesitated. Only a moment ago he had had several things 
worth saying on his tongue; now they would not out. He 
stammered a few words, and broke down in them half-way. 
She said nothing, and after one of the most embarrassing pauses 
he had ever experienced, he avowed in a burst of forlorn 
courage: “To tell the truth, I did not hear much of the 
music.” 

But Louise, who had merely exchanged one chance com- 
panion for another, did not ask the reason, or display any in- 
terest in his confession, and they went on in silence. Maurice 
looked stealthily at her: her white scarf had slipped back and 
her wavy head was bare. She had not heard what he said, 
he told himself; her thoughts had nothing to do with him. 
But as he stole glances at her thus, unreproved, he wakened 
to a sudden consciousness of what was happening to him: here 
and now, after long weeks of waiting, he was walking at her 
side; he knew her, was alone with her, in the summer dark- 
ness, and, though a cold hand gripped his throat at the thought, 
he took the resolve not to let this moment pass him by, empty- 
handed. He must say something that would rouse her to the 
fact of his existence; something that would linger in her mind, 
and make her remember him when he was not there. But they 
were half way down the Grimmaischestrasse ; at the end, where 
the Peterstrasse crossed it, Dove and the Cayhills would branch 
off, and Madeleine return to them. He had no time to choose 
his phrases. 

“ When I was introduced to you this afternoon, Miss Du- 
frayer, you did not know who I was,” he said bluntly. “ But 
I knew you very well — by sight, I mean, of course. I have 
seen you often — very often.” 

He had done what he had hoped to do, had arrested her 
attention. She turned and considered him, struck by the tone 
in which he spoke. 

“ The first time I saw you,” continued Maurice, with the 
same show of boldness — “ you, of course, will not remember 
it. It was one evening in Schwarz’s room — in April — months 
ago. And since then, I . . . well . . . I ” 

She was gazing at him now, in surprise. She remembered 
at this minute, how once before, that day, his manner of 
saying some simple thing had affected her disagreeably. Then, 
she had eluded the matter with an indifferent word; now, she 


120 


MAURICE GUEST 


was not in a mood to do this, or in a mood to show leniency. 
She was dispirited, at war with herself, and she welcomed the 
excuse to vent her own bitterness on another. 

“ And since then — well ? ” 

“ Since then ...” He hesitated, and gave a nervous laugh 
at his own daring. “ Since then . . . well, I have thought 
about you more than — than is good for my peace of mind.” 

For a moment amazement kept her silent; then she, too, 
laughed, and the walls of the dark houses they were passing 
seemed to the young man to re-echo the sound. 

“Your peace of mind!” 

She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical 
emphasis that his unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. 
He wished the ground had swallowed him up before he had 
said them. For, as they fell from her lips, the audacity he 
had been guilty of, and the absurdity that was latent in the 
words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets of hail. 

“Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind 
to do with me?” she cried, growing extravagantly angry. 
“ I never saw you in my life till to-day; I may never see you 
again, and it is all the same to me whether I do or not. — Oh, 
my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hard enough to 
take care of, without having a stranger’s thrown at me ! What 
do you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never 
done anything to you.” 

All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling 
about his ears. He grew pale and did not venture to look 
at her. 

“ Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand 
me so cruelly ! ” 

His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in 
spite of herself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a 
child’s, now it softened, and she spoke more kindly. 

“ Don’t mind what I say. To-night I am tired . . . have a 
headache . . . anything you like.” 

A wave of compassion drowned his petty feelings of injury, 
and his sympathy found vent in a few inadequate words. 

“Help me? — you?” She laughed, in an unhappy way. 
“To help, one must understand, and you couldn’t understand 
though you tried. All you others lead such quiet lives; you 
know nothing of what goes on in a life like mine. Every day I 
ask myself why I have not thrown myself out of the win- 


MAURICE GUEST 121 

dow, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put an end 
to it.” 

Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help 
smiling at his frank gesture of dismay. 

“ Don’t be afraid,” she said, and the smile lingered on her 
lips. “ I shall never do it. I’m too fond of life, and too 
afraid of death. But at least,” she caught herself up again, 
“ you will see how ridiculous it is for you to talk to me of your 
peace of mind. Peace of mind ! I have never even been pass- 
ably content. Something is always wanting. To-night, for 
instance, I feel so much energy in me, and I can make nothing 
of it — nothing! If I were a man, I should walk for hours, 
bareheaded, through the woods. But to be a woman ... to 
be cooped up inside four walls . . . when the night itself is 
not large enough to hold it all ! ” 

She threw out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then 
let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for 
Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made 
him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until 
they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of 
the street. 

“ If I . . . if you would let me . . . There is nothing in 
the world I wouldn’t do to help you,” he ended fervently. 

She did not reply; they had reached the corner where the 
others waited. There was a general leave-taking. Through 
a kind of mist, Maurice saw that Ephie’s face still wore a 
hostile look; and she hardly moved her lips when she bade him 
good-night. 

Madeleine drew her own conclusions as she walked the rest 
of the way home between two pale and silent people. She 
had seen, on coming out of the theatre, that Louise was in one 
of her bad moods — a fact easily to be accounted for by 
Schilsky’s absence. Maurice had evidently been made to suf- 
fer under it, too, for not a syllable was to be drawn from him, 
and, after several unavailing attempts she let him alone. 

As they crossed the Rossplatz , which lay wide and deserted 
in the starlight, Louise said abruptly: “ Suppose, instead of 
going home, we walk to Connewitz?” 

At this proposal, and at Maurice’s seconding of it, Made- 
leine laughed with healthy derision. 

“ That is just like one of your crazy notions,” she said. 
“What a creature you are! For my part, I decline with 
thanks. I have to get a Moscheles etude ready by to-morrow 


122 


MAURICE GUEST 


afternoon, and need all my wits. But don’t let me hinder you. 
Walk to Grimma if you want to.” 

“ What do you say ? Shall you and I go on ? ” Louise 
turned to Maurice; and the young man did not know whether 
she spoke in jest or in earnest. 

Madeleine knew her better. “ Louise! ” she said warningly. 
“ Maurice has work to do to-morrow, too.” 

“ You thought I meant it,” said the girl, and laughed so 
ungovernably that Madeleine was again driven to remon- 
strance. 

“ For goodness’ sake, be quiet! We shall have a policeman 
after us, if you laugh like that.” 

Nothing more was said until they stood before the house- 
door in the Briiderstrasse. There Louise, who had lapsed 
once more into her former indifference, asked Madeleine to 
come upstairs with her. 

“ I will look for the purse again ; and then I can give you 
what I owe you. Or else I am sure to forget. Oh,, it’s still 
early; and the night is so long. No one can think of sleep 
yet.” 

Madeleine was not a night-bird, but she was also not averse 
to having a debt paid. Louise looked from her to Maurice. 
“ Will you come, too, Mr. Guest? It will only take a few 
minutes,” she said, and, seeing his unhappy face, and remem- 
bering what had passed between them, she spoke more gently 
than she had yet done. 

Maurice felt that he ought to refuse; it was late. But 
Madeleine answered for him. “ Of course. Come along, 
Maurice,” and he crossed the threshold behind them. 

After lighting a taper, they entered a paved vestibule, and 
mounted a flight of broad and very shallow stairs; half-way 
up, there was a deep recess for pot-plants, and a wooden seat 
was attached to the wall. The house had been a fine one in 
its day; it was solidly built, had massive doors with heavy 
brass fittings, and thick mahogany banisters. On the first 
floor were two doors, a large and a small one, side by side. 
Louise unlocked the larger, and they stepped into a com- 
modious lobby, off which several rooms opened. She led the 
way to the furthest of these, and entered in front of her com- 
panions. 

Maurice, hesitating just inside the door, found himself close 
to a grand piano, which stood free on all sides, was open, and 
disorderly with music. It was a large room, with three win- 


MAURICE GUEST 


123 


dows; and one end of it was shut off by a high screen, which 
stretched almost from wall to wall. A deep sofa stood in an 
oriel-window; a writing-table was covered with bric-a-brac, 
and three tall flower-vases were filled with purple lilac. But 
there was a general air of untidiness about the room; for 
strewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles 
of dress and the toilet — hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt — all 
traces of her intimate presence. 

As she lifted the lamp from the writing-table to place it on 
the square table before the sofa, Madeleine called her attention 
to a folded paper that had lain beneath it. 

“ It seems to be a letter for you.” 

She caught at it with a kind of avidity, tore it open, and, 
heedless of their presence, devoured it, not only with her eyes, 
but with her parted lips and eager hands. When she looked 
up again, her cheeks had a tinge of colour in them; her eyes 
shone like faceted jewels; her smile was radiant and infectious. 
With no regard for appearances, she buttoned the note in the 
bosom of her dress. 

“ Now we will look for the purse,” she said. “ But come in, 
Mr. Guest — you are still standing at the door. I shall think 
you are offended with me. Oh, how hot the room is! — and 
the lilac is stifling. First the windows open! And then this 
scarf off, and some more light. You will help me to look, will 
you not? ” 

It was to Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of 
her face to his — an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disap- 
peared behind the screen, and came out bareheaded, nestling 
with both hands at the coil of hair on her neck. Then she lit 
two candles that stood on the piano in brass candlesticks, and 
Maurice lighted her round the room, while she searched in 
likely and unlikely places — inside the piano, in empty vases, in 
the folds of the curtains — laughing at herself as she did so, 
until Madeleine said that this was only nonsense, and came after 
them herself. When Maurice held the candle above the writing- 
table, he lighted three large photographs of Schilsky, one more 
dandified than the other ; and he was obliged to raise his other 
hand to steady the candlestick. 

At last, following a hint from Madeleine, they discovered 
the purse between the back of the sofa and the seat; and now 
Louise remembered that it had been in the pocket of her dress- 
ing-gown that afternoon. 

“ How stupid of me ! I might have known,” she said con- 


124 


MAURICE GUEST 


tritely. “ So many things have gone down there in their day. 
Once a silver hair-brush that I was fond of; and I sometimes 
look there when bangles or hat-pins are missing,” and letting 
her eyes dance at Maurice, she threw back her head and 
laughed. 

Here, however, another difficulty arose; except for a few 
nickel coins, the purse was found to contain only gold, and the 
required change could not be made up. 

“ Never mind ; take one of the twenty-mark pieces,” she 
urged. “ Yes, Madeleine, I would rather you did; ” and when 
Madeleine hinted that Maurice might not find it too troublesome 
to come back with the change the following day, she turned to 
the young man, and saying: “Yes, if Mr. Guest would be so 
kind,” smiled at him with such a gracious warmth that it was 
all he could do to reply with a decent unconcern. 

But the hands of the clock on the writing-table were nearing 
half-past eleven, and now it was she who referred to the late- 
ness of the hour. 

“ Thank you very much,” she said to Maurice on parting. 
“And you must forget the nonsense I talked this evening. I 
didn’t mean it — not a word of it.” She laughed and held out 
her hand. “ I wouldn’t shake hands with you this afternoon, 
but now — if you will? For to-night I am not superstitious. 
Nothing bad will happen; I’m sure of that. And I am very 
much obliged to you — lor everything. Good night.” 

Only a few minutes back, he had been steeped in pity for 
her ; now it seemed as if no one had less need of pity or sympathy 
than she. He was bewildered, and went home to pass alter- 
nately from a mood of rapture to one of jealous despair. 
And the latter was torturous, for, as they walked, Madeleine 
had let fall such a vile suspicion that he had parted from her 
in anger, calling as he went that if he believed what she said to 
be true, he would never put faith in a human being again. 

In the light of the morning, of course, he knew that it was 
incredible, a mere phantasm born of the dark ; and towards four 
o’clock that afternoon, he called at the Briiderstrasse with the 
change. But Louise was not at home, and as he did not find 
her in on three successive days, he did not venture to return. 
He wrote his name on a card, and left this, together with the 
money, in an envelope. 


X 


After parting from the rest, Dove and the two Cayhills con- 
tinued their way in silence: they were in the shadow thrown by 
the steep vaulting of the Thomaskirche, before a word was ex- 
changed between them. Johanna had several times glanced 
inquiringly at her sister, but Ephie had turned away her head, 
so that only the outline of her cheek was visible, and as Dove 
had done exactly the same, Johanna could only conclude that 
the two had fallen out. It was something novel for her to be 
obliged to talk when Ephie was present, but it was impossible 
for them to walk the whole way home as mum as this, espe- 
cially as Dove had already heaved more than one deep sigh. 

So, as they turned into the Promenade , Johanna said with a 
jerk, and with an aggressiveness that she could not subdue: 
“ Well, that is the first and the last time anyone shall persuade 
me to go to a so-called opera by Wagner.” 

“ Is not that just a little rash?” asked Dove. He smiled, 
unruffled, with a suggestion of patronage; but there was also a 
preoccupation in his manner, which showed that he was thinking 
of other things. 

“ You call that music,” said Johanna, although he had done 
nothing of the kind. “ I call it noise. I am not musical my- 
self, thank goodness, but at least I know a tune when I hear 
one.” 

“ If my opinion had been asked, I should certainly have sug- 
gested something lighter — Lohengrin or Tannhauser , for in- 
stance,” said Dove. 

“ You would have aone us a favour if you had,” replied 
Johanna; and she meant what she said, in more ways than one. 
She had been at a loss to account for Ephie’s sudden longing 
to hear Die JValkiire , and had gone to the theatre against her 
will, simply because she never thwarted Ephie if she could avoid 
it. Now, after she had heard the opera, she felt aggrieved with 
Dove as well; as far as she had been able to gather from his 
vague explanations, from the bawling of the singers, and from 
subsequent events, the first act treated of relations so infamous 
that, by common consent, they are considered non-existent; and 

125 


126 


MAURICE GUEST 


Johanna was of the opinion that, instead of being so ready to 
take tickets for them, Dove might have let drop a hint of the 
nature of the piece Ephie wished to see. 

After this last remark of Johanna’s there was another lengthy 
pause. Then Dove, looking fondly at what he could see of 
Ephie’s cheek, said : “I am afraid Miss Ephie has not enjoyed 
it either; she is so quiet — so unlike herself.” 

Ephie, who had been staring into the darkness, bit her lip: 
he was at it again. After the unfriendly way in which Maurice 
Guest had deserted her, and forced her into Dove’s company, 
Dove had worried her right down the Grimmaischestrasse , to 
know what the matter was, and how he had offended her. She 
felt exasperated with every one, and if he began his worry- 
ing^ again, would have to vent her irritation somehow. 

“ Ephie has only herself to blame if she didn’t enjoy it; she 
was bent on going,” said Johanna, in the mildly didactic manner 
she invariably used towards her sister. “ But I think she is 
only tired — or a little cross.” 

“ Oh, that is not likely,” Dove hastened to interpose. 

“ I am not cross, Joan,” said Ephie angrily. “ And if it was 
my fault you had to come — I’ve enjoyed myself very much, and 
I shall go again, as often as I like. But I won’t be teased — I 
won’t indeed ! ” 

This was the sharpest answer Johanna had ever received from 
Ephie. She looked at her in dismay, but made no response, for 
of nothing was Johanna more afraid than of losing the good- 
will Ephie bore her. Mentally she put her sister’s pettishness 
down to the noise and heat of the theatre, and it was an addi- 
tional reason for bearing Wagner and his music a grudge. Dove 
also made no further effort to converse connectedly, but his 
silence was of a conciliatory kind, and, as they advanced along 
the Promenade , he qould not deny himself the pleasure of draw- 
ing the pretty, perverse child’s attention to the crossings, the ruts 
in the road, the best bits of pavement, with a: “ Walk you here, 
Miss Ephie,” “Take care,” “Allow me,” himself meanwhile 
dancing from one side of the footpath to the other, until the 
young girl was almost distracted. 

“ I can see for myself, thank you. I have eyes in my head as 
well as anyone else,” she exclaimed at length ; and to Johanna’s 
amazed: “ Ephie! ” she retorted: “ Yes, Joan, you think no one 
has a right to be rude but yourself.” 

Johanna was more hurt by these words than she would 
have confessed. She had hitherto believed that Ephie — 


MAURICE GUEST 


127 

affectionate, lazy little Ephie — accepted her individual pecu- 
liarities as an integral part of her nature : it had not occurred 
to her that Ephie might be standing aloof and considering her 
objectively — let alone mentally using such an unkind word as 
rudeness of her. But Ephie’s fit of ill-temper, for such it un- 
doubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted 
at unsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a some- 
what laming care of one’s words in the days to come, which 
would render it difficult ever again to be one’s perfectly natural 
self. 

Had Johanna not been so occupied with her own feelings, 
she would have heard the near tears in Ephie’s voice; it was 
with the utmost difficulty that the girl kept them back, and at 
the house-door, she had vanished up the stairs long before Dove 
had finished saying good-night. In the corridor, she hesitated 
whether or no, according to custom, she should go to her 
mother’s room. Then she put a brave face on it, and opened the 
door. 

“ Here we are, mummy. Good night. I hope the evening 
wasn’t too long.” 

Long? — on the contrary the hours had flown. Mrs. Cayhill, 
left to herself, had all the comfortable sensations of a tippler 
in the company of his bottle. She could forge ahead, undeterred 
by any sense of duty; she had not to interrupt herself to laugh 
at Ephie’s wit, nor was she troubled by Johanna’s cold eye — 
that eye which told more plainly than words, how her elder 
daughter regarded her self-indulgence. Propped up in bed on 
two pillows, she now laid down her book, and put out her hand 
to draw Ephie to her. 

“ Did you enjoy it, darling? Were you amused? But you 
will tell me all about it in the morning.” 

“ Yes, mother, in the morning. I am a little tired — but it 
was very sweet,” said Ephie bravely. “ Good night.” 

Mrs. Cayhill kissed her, and nodded in perfect contentment 
at the pretty little figure before her. Ephie was free to go. 
And at last she was in her own room — at last ! 

She hastily locked both doors, one leading to the passage and 
one to her sister’s room. A moment later, Johanna was at the 
latter, trying to open it. 

“Ephie! What is the matter? Why have you locked the 
door? Open it at once, I insist upon it,” she cried anxiously, 
and as loudly as she dared, for fear of disturbing the other in- 
mates of the house. 


128 


MAURICE GUEST 


But Ephie begged hard not to be bothered; she had a bad 
headache, and only wanted to be quiet. 

“ Let me give you a powder,” urged her sister. “You are 
so excited — I am sure you are not well ; ” and when this, too, 
was refused: “ You had nothing but some tea, child — you must 
be hungry. And they have left our supper on the table.” 

No, she was not hungry, didn’t want any supper, and was 
very sleepy. 

“ Well, at least unlock your door, begged Johanna, with 
visions of the dark practices which Ephie, the soul of candour, 
might be contemplating on the other side. “ I will not come in, 
I promise you,” she added. 

“ Oh, all right,” said Ephie crossly. But as soon as she heard 
that Johanna had gone, she returned to the middle of the room 
without touching the door; and after standing undecided for 
a moment, as if not quite sure what was coming next, she sat 
down on a chair at the foot of the bed, and suddenly began to 
cry. The tears had been in waiting for so long that they flowed 
without effort, abundantly, rolling one over another down her 
cheeks ; but she was careful not to make a sound ; for, even when 
sobbing bitterly, she did not forget that at any moment Johanna 
might enter the adjoining room and overhear her. And then, 
what a fuss there would be! For Ephie was one of those for- 
tunate people who always get what they want, and but rarely 
have occasion to cry. All her desires had moved low, near 
earth, and been easily fulfilled. Did she break her prettiest doll, 
a still prettier was forthcoming; did anything happen to cross 
wish or scheme of hers, half a dozen brains were at work to 
think out a compensation. 

But now she wept in earnest, behind closed doors, for she had 
received an injury which no one could make good. And the 
more she thought of it, the more copiously her tears flowed. 
The evening had been one long tragedy of disappointment: her 
fevered anticipation beforehand, her early throbs of excitement 
in the theatre, her growing consternation as the evening ad- 
vanced, her mortification at being slighted — a sensation which 
she experienced for the first time. Again and again she asked 
herself what she had done to be treated in this way. What had 
happened to change him? 

She was sitting upright on her chair, letting the tears stream 
unchecked; her two hands lay upturned on her knee; in one of 
them was a diminutive lace handkerchief, rolled to a ball, with 
which now and then she dabbed away the hottest tears. The 


MAURICE GUEST 


129 


windows of the room were still open, the blinds undrawn, and 
the street-lamps threw a flickering mesh of light on the wall. 
In the glass that hung over the washstand, she saw her dim 
reflection: following an impulse, she dried her eyes, and, with 
trembling fingers, lighted two candles, one on each side of the 
mirror. By this uncertain light, she leant forward with both 
hands on the stand, and peered at herself with a new curi- 
osity. 

She was still just as she had come out of the theatre: a many- 
coloured silk scarf was twisted round her head, and the brilliant, 
dangling fringes, and the stray tendrils of hair that escaped, 
made a frame for the rounded oval of her face. And then her 
skin was so fine, her eyes were so bright, the straight lashes so 
black and so long! — she put her head back, looked at herself 
through half-closed lids, turned her face this way and that, even 
smiling, wet though her cheeks were, in order that she might 
see the even line of teeth, with their slightly notched edges. The 
smile was still on her lips when the tears welled up again, ran 
over, trickled down and dropped with a splash, she watching 
them, until a big, unexpected sob rose in her throat, and almost 
choked her. Yes, she was pretty — oh, very, very pretty! But it 
made what had happened all the harder to understand. How 
had he had the heart to treat her so cruelly ? 

She knelt down by the open window, and laid her head on 
the sill. The moon, a mere sharp line of silver, hung fine and 
slender, like a polished scimitar, above the dark mass of houses 
opposite. Turning her hot face up to it, she saw that it was 
new, and instantly felt a throb of relief that she had not caught 
her first glimpse of it through glass. She bowed her head to it, 
quickly, nine times running, and sent up a prayer to the deity 
of fortune that had its home there. Good luck ! — the fulfilment 
of one’s wish ! She wished in haste, with tight-closed eyes — and 
who knew but what, the very next day, her wish might come 
true! Tired with crying, above all, tired of the grief itself, she 
began more and more to let her thoughts stray to the morrow. 
And having once yielded to the allurements of hope, she even 
endeavoured to make the best of the past evening, telling herself 
that she had not been alone for a single instant ; he had really had 
no chance of speaking to her. In the next breath, of course, she 
reminded herself that he might easily have made a chance, had he 
wished; and a healthier feeling of resentment stole over her. 
Rising from her cramped position, she shut the window. She 
resolved to show him that she was not a person who could be 


130 MAURICE GUEST 

treated in this off-hand fashion ; he should see that she was not 
to be trifled with. 

But she played with her unhappiness a little longer, and even 
had an idea of throwing herself on the bed without undressing. 
She was very sleepy, though, and the desire to be between the 
cool, soft sheets was too strong to be withstood. She slipped out 
of her clothes, leaving them just where they fell on the floor, 
like round pools; and before she had finished plaiting her hair, 
she was stifling a hearty yawn. But in bed, when the light was 
out, she lay and stared before her. 

“ I am very, very unhappy. I shall not sleep a wink,” she 
said to herself, and sighed at the prospect of the night-watch. 

But before five minutes had passed her closed hand relaxed, 
and lay open and innocent on the coverlet; her breath came 
regularly — she was fast asleep. The moon was visible for a 
time in the setting of the unshuttered window; and when she 
wakened next day, toward nine o’clock, the full morning sun 
was playing on the bed. 

For several months prior to this, Ephie had worshipped 
Schilsky at a distance. The very first time she saw him play, 
he had made a profound impression on her: he looked so earnest 
and melancholy, so supremely indifferent to every one about him, 
as he stood with his head bent to his violin. Then, too, he had 
beautiful hands ; and she did not know which she admired more, 
his auburn hair with the big hat set so jauntily on it, or the 
thrillingly impertinent way he had of staring at you — through 
half-closed eyes, with his head well back — in a manner at once 
daring and irresistible. 

Having come through a period of low spirits, caused by an 
acute consciousness of her own littleness and inferiority, Ephie 
so far recovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at 
her divinity when she met him; and soon after this, she made 
the intoxicating discovery that not only did he return her look, 
but that he also took notice of her, and deliberately singled her 
out with his gaze. And the belief was pardonable on Ephie’s 
part, for Schilsky made it a point of honour to stare any pretty 
girl into confusion; besides which, he had a habit of falling 
into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more of what or 
whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. More 
than once, Ephie had blushed and writhed in blissful torture 
under these stonily staring eyes. 

From this to persuading herself that her feelings were re- 


MAURICE GUEST 


131 

turned was only a step. Events and details, lighter than 
puff-balls, were to her links of iron, which formed a won- 
derful chain of evidence. She went about nursing the idea that 
Schilsky desired an introduction as much as she did ; that he was 
suffering from a romantic and melancholy attachment, which 
forbade him attempting to approach her. 

At this date, she became an adept at inventing excuses to go 
to the Conservatorium when she thought he was likely to be 
there; and, suddenly grown rebellious, she shook off Johanna’s 
protectorship, which until now had weighed lightly on her. She 
grew fastidious about her dress, studied before the glass which 
colours suited her best, and the effect of a particular bow or 
ribbon ; while on the days she had her violin-lessons, she de- 
veloped a coquetry which made nothing seem good enough to 
wear, and was the despair of Johanna. When Schilsky played 
at an A bendunterhaltung , she sat in the front row of seats, and 
made her hands ache with applauding. Afterwards she lay 
wakeful, with hot cheeks, and dreamt extravagant dreams of 
sending him great baskets and bouquets of flowers, with col- 
oured streamers to them, such as the singers in the opera re- 
ceived on a gala night. And though no name was given, he 
would know from whom they came. But on the only occasion 
she tried to carry out the scheme, and ventured inside a florist’s 
shop, her scant command of German, and the excessive circum- 
stantiality of the matter, made her feel so uncomfortable that 
she had fled precipitately, leaving the shopman staring after her 
in surprise. 

Things were at this pass when, one day late in May, Ephie 
went as usual to take her lesson. It was two o’clock on a 
cloudless afternoon, and so warm that the budding lilac in 
squares and gardens began to give out fragrance. In the white- 
washed, many-windowed corridors of the Conservatorium, the 
light was harsh and shadowless; it jarred on one, wounded the 
nerves. So at least thought Schilsky, who was hanging about 
the top storey of the building, in extreme ill-humour. He had 
been forced to make an appointment with a man to whom he 
owed money; the latter had not yet appeared, and Schilsky 
lounged and swore, with his two hands deep in his pockets, and 
his sulkiest expression. But gradually, he found himself listen- 
ing to the discordant tones of a violin — at first unconsciously, as 
we listen when our thoughts are elsewhere engaged, then more 
and more intently. In one of the junior masters’ rooms, some 
one had begun to play scales in the third position, uncertainly, 


132 


MAURICE GUEST 


with shrill feebleness, seeking out each note, only to produce it 
falsely. As this scraping worked on him, Schilsky could not 
refrain from rubbing his teeth together, and screwing up his 
face as though he had toothache; now that the miserable little 
tones had successfully penetrated his ear, they hit him like so 
many blows. 

“ Damn him for a fool ! ” he said savagely to himself, and 
found an outlet for his irritation in repeating these words 
aloud. Then, however, as an etude was commenced, with an 
impotence that struck him as purely vicious, he could endure 
the torment no longer. He had seen in the Bureau the particu- 
lar master, and knew that the latter had not yet come upstairs. 
Going to the room from which the sounds issued, he stealthily 
opened the door. 

A girl was standing with her back to him, and was so en- 
grossed in playing that she did not hear him enter. On seeing 
this, he proposed to himself the schoolboy pleasure of creeping 
up behind her and giving her a well-deserved fright. He did 
so, with such effect that, had he not caught it, her violin would 
have fallen to the floor. 

He took both her wrists in his, held them firm, and, from his 
superior height — he was head and shoulders taller than Ephie 
— looked down on the miscreant. He recognised her now as a 
pretty little American whom he had noticed from time to time 
about the building; but — but . . . well, that she was as 
astoundingly pretty as this, he had had no notion. His eyes 
strayed over her face, picking out all its beauties, and he felt 
himself growing as soft as butter. Besides, she had crimsoned 
down to her bare, dimpled neck; her head drooped; her long 
lashes covered her eyes, and a tremulous smile touched the 
corners of her mouth, which seemed uncertain whether to laugh 
or to cry — the short, upper-lip trembled. He felt from her 
wrists, and saw from the uneasy movement of her breast, how 
wildly her heart was beating — it was as if one held a bird in 
one’s hand. His ferocity died away; none of the hard words he 
had had ready crossed his lips; all he said, and in his gentlest 
voice, was: “Have I frightened you?” He was desperately 
curious to know the colour of her eyes, and, as she neither an- 
swered him nor looked up, but only grew more and more con- 
fused, he let one of her hands fall, and taking her by the chin, 
turned her face up to his. She was forced to look at him for a 
moment. Upon which, he stooped and kissed her on the mouth, 
three times, with a pause between each kiss. Then, at a noise in 


MAURICE GUEST 


133 


the corridor, he swung hastily from the room, and was just in 
time to avoid the master, against whom he brushed up in going 
out of the door. 

Herr Becker looked suspiciously at his favourite pupil’s tell- 
tale face and air of extreme confusion ; and, throughout the les- 
son, his manner to her was so cold and short that Ephie played 
worse than ever before. After sticking fast in the middle of a 
passage, she stopped altogether, and begged to be allowed to go 
home. When she had gone, and some one else was playing, 
Herr Becker stood at the window and shook his head : 
round this innocent baby face he had woven several pretty 
fancies. 

Meanwhile Ephie flew rather than walked home, and having 
reached her room unseen, flung herself on the bed, and buried 
her burning cheeks in the white coolness of the pillows. Jo- 
hanna, finding her thus, a short time after, was alarmed, put 
questions of various kinds, felt sure the sun had been too hot 
for her, and finally stood over the bed, holding her unfailing 
remedy, a soothing powder for the nerves. 

“ Oh, do for goodness’ sake, leave me alone, Joan,” said 
Ephie. “ I don’t want your powders. I am all right. Just 
let me be.” 

She drank the mixture, however, and catching sight of Jo- 
hanna’s anxious face, and aware that she had been cross, she 
threw her arms round her sister, hugged her, and called her a 
“ dear old darling Joan.” But there was something in the stormy 
tenderness of the embrace, in the flushed cheeks and glittering 
eyes that made Johanna even more uneasy. She insisted upon 
Ephie lying still and trying to sleep; and, after taking off her 
shoes for her, and noiselessly drawing down the blinds, she went 
on tiptoe out of the room. 

Ephie burrowed more deeply in her pillow, and putting both 
hands to her ears, to shut out the world, went over the details of 
what had happened. It was like a fairy-story. She walked lazily 
down the sunny corridor, entered the class-room, and took off 
her hat, which Herr Becker hung up for her, after having 
playfully examined it. She had just taken her violin from its 
case, when he remembered something he had to do in the Bureau , 
and went out of the room, bidding her practise her scales during 
his absence ; she heard again and smiled at the funny accent with 
which he said : “ Shust a moment.” She saw the bare walls of 
the room, the dust that lay white on the lid on the piano, was 
conscious of the difficulties of c sharp minor. She even knew 


134 


MAURICE GUEST 


the very note at which he had been beside her — without a word 
of warning, as suddenly as though he had sprung from the earth. 
She heard the cry she had given, and felt his hands — the hands 
she had so often admired — clasp her wrists. He was so close 
to her that she felt his breath, and knew the exact shape of the 
diamond ring he wore on his little finger. She felt, too, rather 
than saw the audacious admiration of his eyes ; and his voice was 
not the less caressing because a little thick. And then — then — 
she burrowed more firmly, held her ears more tightly to, laughed 
a happy, gurgling laugh that almost choked her: never, as long 
as she lived, would she forget the feel of his moustache as it 
scratched her lips! 

When she rose and looked at herself in the glass, it seemed ex- 
traordinary that there should be no outward difference in her; 
and for several days she did not lose this sensation of being 
mysteriously changed. She was quieter than usual, and her 
movements were a little languid, but a kind of subdued radiance 
peeped through and shone in her eyes. She waited confidently 
for something to happen: she did not herself know what it 
would be, but, after the miracle that had occurred, it was 
beyond belief that things could jog on in their old familiar 
course; and so she waited and expected — at every letter the 
postman brought, each time the door-bell rang, whenever she 
went into the street. 

But after a week had dragged itself to an end, and she had not 
even seen Schilsky again, she grew restless and unsure; and 
sometimes at night, when Johanna thought she was asleep, she 
would stand at her window, and, with a very different face 
from that which she wore by day, put countless questions to her- 
self, all of which began with why and how. And Johanna was 
again beset by the fear that Ephie was sickening for an illness, 
for the child would pass from bursts of rather forced gaiety to 
fits of real fretfulness, or sink into brown studies, from which 
she wakened with a start. But if, on some such occasion, Jo- 
hanna said to her: “Where are your thoughts, Ephie ? ” she 
would only laugh, and answer, with a hug: “Wool-gathering, 
you dear old bumble-bee! ” 

From the lesson following the eventful one, Ephie played 
truant, on the ground of headache, partly because her fancy 
pictured him lying in wait like an ogre to eat her up, and partly 
from a poor little foolish fear lest he should think her too easily 
won. Now, however, she blamed herself for not having given 
him an opportunity to speak to her, and began to frequent the 


MAURICE GUEST 


135 

Conservatorium assiduously. When, after ten long days, she 
saw him again, an unfailing instinct guided her aright. 

It was in the vestibule, as she was leaving the building, and 
they met face to face. Directly she espied him, though her 
heart thumped alarmingly, Ephie tossed her head, gazed fixedly 
at some distant object, and was altogether as haughty as 
her parted lips would allow of. And she played her part 
so well that Schilsky’s attention was arrested; he remembered 
who she was, and stared hard at her as she passed. Not only 
this, but pleased, he could not have told why, he turned and 
followed her out, and standing on the steps, looked after her. 
She went down the street with her head in the air, holding her 
dress very high to display a lace-befrilled petticoat, and clattering 
gracefully on two high-heeled, pointed shoes. He screwed up 
his eyes against the sun, in order to see her better — he was 
short-sighted, too, but vanity forbade him to wear glasses — 
and when, at the corner of the street, Ephie rather spoilt the 
effect of her behaviour by throwing a hasty glance back, he 
laughed and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. 

" Verdammt! ” he said with expression. 

And both on that day and the next, when he admired a well- 
turned ankle or a pretty petticoat, he was reminded of the pro- 
voking little American, with the tossed head and baby mouth. 

A few days later, in the street that ran alongside the Gewand- 
haus, he saw her again. 

Ephie, who, in the interval, had upbraided herself incessantly, 
was none the less, now the moment had come, about to pass as 
before — even more frigidly. But this time Schilsky raised his 
hat, with a tentative smile, and, in order not to appear childish, 
she bowed ever so slightly. When he was safely past, she 
could not resist giving a furtive look behind her, and at precisely 
the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephie 
found the coincidence droll ; she tittered, and he saw it, although 
she immediately laid the back of her hand on her lips. It was not 
in him to let this pass unnoticed. With a few quick steps, 
he was at her side. 

He took off his hat again, and looked at her not quite sure 
how to begin. 

“ I am happy to see you have not forgotten me,” he said in 
excellent English. 

Ephie had impulsively stopped on hearing him come up with 
her, and now, colouring deeply, tried to dig a hole in the pave- 
ment with the toe of her shoe. She, too, could not think 


136 


MAURICE GUEST 


what to say ; and this, together with the effect produced on her 
by his peculiar lisp, made her feel very uncomfortable. She 
was painfully conscious of his insistent eyes on her face, as 
he waited for her to speak; but there was a distressing pause 
before he added : “ And sorry to see you are still angry with 

me.” 

At this, she found her tongue. Looking, not at him, but 
at a passer-by on the opposite side of the street, she said: 
“ Why, I guess I have a right to be.” 

She tried to speak severely, but her voice quavered, and once 
more the young man was not sure whether the trembling of 
her lip signified tears or laughter. 

“ Are you always so cruel ? ” he asked, with an intentness 
that made her eyes seek the ground again. “ Such a little 
crime! Is there no hope for me? ” 

She attempted to be dignified. “ Little ! I am really not 
accustomed ” 

“Then I’m not to be forgiven?” 

His tone was so humble that suddenly she had to laugh. 
Shooting a quick glance at him, she said : 

“ That depends on how you behave in future. If you 
promise never to ” 

Before the words were well out of her mouth, she was 
aware of her stupidity; her laugh ended, and she grew red- 
der than before. Schilsky had laughed, too, quite frankly, and 
he continued to smile at the confusion she had fallen into. It 
seemed a long time before he said with emphasis : “ That is 

the last thing in the world you should ask of me.” 

Ephie drooped her head, and dug with her shoe again; she 
had never been so tongue-tied as to-day, just when she felt she 
ought to say something very cold and decisive. But not an 
idea presented itself, and meanwhile he went on : “ The pun- 

ishment would be too hard. The temptation was so great.” 

As she was still obstinately silent, he stooped and peeped 
under the overhanging brim of her hat. “ Such pretty lips! ” 
he said, and then, as on the former occasion, he took her by 
the chin and turned her face up to his. 

But she drew back angrily. “ Mr. Schilsky! . . . how dare 
you! Take your hand away at once.” 

“There! — I have sinned again,” he said, and folded his 
hands in mock supplication. “ Now I am afraid you will 
never forgive me. — But listen, you have the advantage of me; 
you know my name. Will you not tell me yours? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


i37 


Having retreated a full yard from him, Ephie regained some 
of her native self-composure. For the first time, she found her- 
self able to look straight at him. “ No,” she said, with a touch 
of her usual lightness. “ I shall leave you to find it out for 
yourself; it will give you something to do.” 

They both laughed. “ At least give me your hand,” he said ; 
and when he held it in his, he would not let her go, until, after 
much seeming reluctance on her part, she had detailed to him 
the days and hours of her lessons at the Conservatorium, and 
where he would be likely to meet her. As before, he stood 
and watched her go down the street, hoping that she would turn 
at the corner. But, on this day, Ephie whisked along in a great 
hurry. 

On after occasions, he waylaid her as she came and went, 
and either stood talking to her, or walked the length of the 
street beside her. At the early hour of the afternoon when 
Ephie had her lessons, he did not need to fear being seen by 
acquaintances; the sunshine was undisturbed in the quiet street. 
The second time they met, he told her that he had found out 
what her name was; and his efforts to pronounce it afforded 
Ephie much amusement. Their conversation was always of 
the same nature, half banter, half earnest. Ephie, who had 
rapidly recovered her assurance, invariably began in her archest 
manner, and it became his special pleasure to reduce her, little 
by little, to a crimson silence. 

But one day, about a fortnight later, she came upon him at 
a different hour, when he was not expecting to see her. He 
was strolling up and down in front of the Conservatorium, 
waiting for Louise, who might appear at any moment. Ephie 
had been restless all the morning, and had finally made an 
excuse to go out: her steps naturally carried her to the Con- 
servatorium, where she proposed to study the notice-board, 
on the chance of seeing Schilsky. When she caught sight of 
him, her eyes brightened ; she greeted him with an inviting smile, 
and a saucy remark. But Schilsky did not take up her tone ; he 
cut her words short. 

“What are you doing here to-day? ” he asked with a frown 
of displeasure, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the inner 
staircase — visible through the glass doors — down which Louise 
would come. “ I haven’t a moment to spare.” 

Mortally offended by his manner, Ephie drew back her ex- 
tended hand, and giving him a look of surprise and resentment, 
was about to pass him by without a further word. But this 


MAURICE GUEST 


138 

was more than Schilsky could bear; he put out his hand to 
stop her, always, though, with one eye on the door. 

“ Now, don’t be cross, little girl,” he begged impatiently. 
“ It’s not my fault — upon my word it isn’t. I wasn’t expecting 
to see you to-day — you know that. Look here, tell me — this 
sort of thing is so unsatisfactory — is there no other place I 
could see you ? What do you do with yourself all day ? Come, 
answer me, don’t be angry.” 

Ephie melted. “ Come and visit us on Sunday afternoon,” 
she said. “We are always at home then.” 

He laughed rudely, and took no notice of her words. “ Come, 
think of something — quick ! ” he said. 

He was on tenter-hooks to be gone, and showed it. Ephie 
grew flustered, and though she racked her brains, could make 
no further suggestion. 

“ Oh well, if you can’t, you know,” he said crossly, and 
loosened his hold of her arm. 

Then, at the last moment, she had a flash of inspiration; 
she remembered how, on the previous Sunday, Dove had talked 
enthusiastically of an opera-performance, which, if she were 
not mistaken, was to take place the following night. Dove 
had declared that all musical Leipzig would probably be present 
in the theatre. Surely she might risk mentioning this, without 
fear of another snub. 

“ I am going to the opera to-morrow night,” she said in a 
small, meek voice, and was on the verge of tears. 

Schilsky hardly heard her; Louise had appeared at the head 
of the stairs. “ The very thing,” he said. “ I shall look out 
for you there, little girl. Good-bye. Auf Wiedersehen! ” 

He went down the steps, without even raising his hat, and 
when Louise came out, he was sauntering towards the building 
again, as if he had come from the other end of the street. 

Ephie went home in a state of anger and humiliation which 
was new to her. For the first few hours, she was resolved never 
to speak to Schilsky again. When this mood passed, she made 
up her mind that he should atone for his behaviour to the last 
iota: he should grovel before her; she would scarcely deign 
to look at him. But the nearer the time came for their meet- 
ing, the more were her resentful feelings swallowed up by 
the wish to see him. She counted off the hours till the opera 
commenced ; she concocted a scheme to escape Johanna’s sur- 
veillance; she had a story ready, if it should be necessary, of 
how she had once been introduced to Schilsky. Her fingers 


MAURICE GUEST 


i39 


trembled with impatience as she fastened on a pretty new dress, 
which had just been sent home: a light, flowered stuff, with 
narrow bands of black velvet artfully applied so as to throw 
the fairness of her hair and skin into relief. 

The consciousness of looking her best gave her manner a 
light sureness that was very charming. But from the moment 
they entered the foyer, Ephie’s heart began to sink: the crowd 
was great; she could not see Schilsky; and in his place came 
Dove, who was not to be shaken off. Even Maurice was bad 
enough — what concern of his was it how she enjoyed herself? 
When, finally, she did discover the person she sought, he was 
with some one else, and did not see her; and when she had suc- 
ceeded in making him look, he frowned, shook his head, and 
made angry signs that she was not to speak to him, afterwards 
going downstairs with the sallow girl in white. What did it 
mean? All through the tedious second act, Ephie wound her 
handkerchief round and round, and in and out of her fingers. 
Would it never end ? How long would the fat, ugly Briinnhilde 
stand talking to Siegmund and the woman who lay so ungrace- 
fully between his knees? As if it mattered a straw what these 
sham people did or felt! Would he speak to her in the next 
interval, or would he not? 

The side curtains had hardly swept down before she was 
up from her seat, hurrying Johanna away. This time she 
chose to stand against the wall, at the end of the foyer . After a 
short time, he came in sight, but he had no more attention to 
spare for her than before; he did not even look in her direction. 
Her one consolation was that obviously he was not enjoying 
himself; he wore a surly face, was not speaking, and, to a 
remark the girl in white made, he answered by an angry flap 
of the hand. When they had twice gone past in this way, and 
she had each time vainly put herself forward, Ephie began to 
take an interest in what Dove was saying, to smile at him and 
coquet with him, and the more openly, the nearer Schilsky drew. 
Other people grew attentive, and Dove went into a seventh 
heaven, which made it hard for him placidly to accept the fit 
of pettish silence, she subsequently fell into. 

The crowning touch was put to this disastrous evening by 
the fact that Schilsky’s companion of the foyer walked the 
greater part of the way home with them ; and, what was 
worse, that she took not the slightest notice of Ephie. . 


XI 


Before leaving her bedroom the following morning, Ephie 
wrote on her scented pink paper a short letter, which began: 
“ Dear Mr. Schilsky,” and ended with: “Your sincere friend, 
Euphemia Stokes Cayhill.” In this letter, she “ failed to under- 
stand ” his conduct of the previous evening, and asked him for 
an explanation. Not until she had closed the envelope, did she 
remember that she was ignorant of his address. She bit the 
end of her pen, thinking hard, and directly breakfast was over, 
put on her hat and slipped out of the house. 

It was the first time Ephie had had occasion to enter the 
Bureau of the Conservatorium ; and, when the heavy door had 
swung to behind her, and she was alone in the presence of the 
secretaries, each of whom was bent over a high desk, writing 
in a ledger, her courage almost failed her. The senior, an old, 
white-haired man, with a benevolent face, did not look up; 
but after she had stood hesitating for some minutes, an under- 
secretary solemnly laid down his pen, and coming to the counter, 
wished in English to know what he could do for her. Growing 
very red, Ephie asked him if he “ would . . . could . . . 
would please tell her where Mr. Schilsky lived.” 

Herr Kleefeld leaned both hands on the counter, and dis- 
concerted her by staring at her over his spectacles. 

“ Mr. Schilsky? Is it very important? ” he said with a leer, 
as if he were making a joke. 

“ Why, yes, indeed,” replied Ephie timidly. 

He nodded his head, more to himself than to her, went back 
to his desk, opened another ledger, and ran his finger down a 
page, repeating aloud as he did so, to her extreme embarrasss- 
ment: “Mr. Schilsky — let me see. Mr. Schilsky — let me 
see.” 

After a pause, he handed her a slip of paper, on which he had 
painstakingly copied the address: “ Talstrasse, 12 III.” 

“ Why, I thank you very much. I have to ask him about 
some music. Is there anything to pay? ” stammered Ephie. 

But Herr Kleefeld, leaning as before on the counter, shook 
his head from side to side, with a waggish air, which confused 
Ephie still more. She made her escape, and left him there, 
still wagging, like a china Mandarin. 

140 


MAURICE GUEST 


141 

Having addressed the letter in the nearest post office, she 
entered a confectioner’s and bought a pound of chocolate creams ; 
so that when Johanna met her in the passage, anxious and angry 
at her leaving the house without a word, she was able to assert 
that her candy-box had been empty, and she felt she could not 
begin to practise till it was refilled. But Johanna was very 
cantankerous, and obliged her to study an hour overtime to 
atone for her escapade. 

Then followed for Ephie several unhappy days, when all 
the feeling she seemed capable of concentrated itself on the 
visits of the postman. She remained standing at the window 
until she had seen him come up the street, and she was regularly 
the first to look through the mails as they lay on the lobby table. 
Two days brought no reply to her letter. On the third fell 
a lesson, which she was resolved not to take. But when the 
hour came, she dressed herself with care and went as usual. 
Schilsky was nowhere to be seen. Half a week later, the same 
thing was repeated, except that on this day, she made herself 
prettier than ever: she was like some gay, garden flower, in 
a big white hat, round the brim of which lay scarlet poppies, 
and a dress of a light blue, which heightened the colour of her 
cheeks, and, reflected in her eyes, made them bluer than a fjord 
in the sun. But her spirits were low; if she did not see him 
this time, despair would crush her. 

But she did — saw him while she was still some distance off, 
standing near the portico of the Conservatorium ; and at the 
sight of him, after the uncertainty she had gone through during 
the past week, she could hardly keep back her tears. He did 
not come to meet her; he stood and watched her approach, and 
only when she reached him, indolently held out his hand. As 
she refused to notice it, and went to the extreme edge of the 
pavement to avoid it, he made a barrier of his arms, and forced 
her to stand still. Holding her thus, with his hand on her 
elbow, he looked keenly at her; and, in spite of the obdurate 
way in which she kept her eyes turned from him, he saw that 
she was going to cry. For a moment he hesitated, afraid of 
the threatening scene, then, with a decisive movement, he took 
her violin-case out of her hand. Ephie made an ineffectual 
effort to get possession of it again, but he held it above her 
reach, and saying: “Wait a minute,” ran up the steps. He 
came back without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, 
took the young girl’s arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace 
to the woods. She made a few, faint protests. But he re- 


142 MAURICE GUEST 

plied : “ You and I have something to say to each other, little 

girl.” . . 

A full hour had elapsed when Ephie appeared again. She 
was alone, and walked quickly, casting shy glances from side 
to side. On reaching the Conservatorium, she waited in a 
quiet corner of the vestibule for nearly a quarter of an hour, 
before Schilsky sauntered in, and released her violin from the 
keeping of the janitor, a good friend of his. 

They had not gone far into the wood; Schilsky knew of a 
secluded seat, which was screened by a kind of boscage; and 
here they had remained. At first, Ephie had cried heartily, 
in happy relief, and he had not been able to console her. He 
had come to meet her with many good resolutions, determined 
not to let the little affair, so lightly begun, lead to serious 
issues; but Ephie’s tears, and the tale they told, and the sobbed 
confessions that slipped out unawares, made it hard for him 
to be wise. He put his arm round her, dried her tears with 
his own handkerchief, kissed the hand he held. And when he 
had in this way petted her back to composure, she suddenly 
looked up in his face, and, with a pretty, confiding movement, 
said: 

“ Then you do care for me a little? ” 

It would have need a stronger than he to answer other- 
wise. “ Of course I do,” was easily said, and to avoid the 
necessity of more, he kissed the pink dimples at the base of her 
four fingers, as well as the baby crease that marked the wrist. 
The poppy-strewn hat lay on the seat beside them; the fluffy 
head and full white throat were bare; in the mellow light of 
the trees, the lashes looked jet-black on her cheeks; at each 
word, he saw her small, even teeth: and he was so unnerved 
by the nearness of all this fresh young beauty that, when Ephie 
with her accustomed frankness had told him everything he 
cared to know, he found himself saying, in place of what he 
had intended, that they must be very cautious. In the mean- 
time, it would not do for them to be seen together: it might 
injure his prospects, be harmful to his future. 

“Yes, but afterwards?” she asked him promptly. 

He kissed her cheek. But she repeated the question, and 
he was obliged to reply: that would be a different matter. 
It was now her turn to be curious, and one of the first questions 
she put related to the dark girl he had been with at the theatre. 
Playing lightly with her fingers, Schilsky told her that this was 
one of his best friends, some one he had known for a long, 


MAURICE GUEST 


143 


long time, to whom he owed much, and whom he could under 
no circumstances offend. Ephie looked grave for a moment; 
and, in the desire of provoking a pretty confession, he asked her 
if she had minded very much seeing him with some one else. 
But she made him wince by responding with perfect candour: 
“ With her? Oh, no! She’s quite old.” 

Before parting, they arranged the date of the next meeting, 
and, a beginning once made, they saw each other as often as 
was feasible. Ephie grew wonderfully apt at excuses for going 
out at odd times, and for prolonged absences. Sound fictions 
were needed to satisfy Johanna, and even Maurice Guest was 
made to act as dummy: he had taken her for a walk, or they 
had been together to see Madeleine Wade; and by these means, 
and also by occasionally shirking a lesson, she gained a good 
deal of freedom. Johanna would as soon have thought of 
herself being untruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had 
never known to tell a lie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous 
of all the new claims made on her little sister’s attention, such 
a feeling was only temporary, and she was, for the most part, 
content to see Ephie content. 

At night, in her own room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and 
big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place 
at their last meeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the 
future. She was absurdly happy; and her mother and sister 
had never found her more charming and lovable, or richer in 
those trifling inspirations for brightening life, which happiness 
brings with it. She looked forward with secret triumph to 
the day when she would be able to announce her engagement to 
the celebrated young violinist, and the only shadow on her happi- 
ness was that she could not do this immediately. It did not once 
cross her mind to doubt the issue : she had always had her way, 
and, in her own mind, had long since arranged just how this 
matter was to fall out. She would return to America — where, of 
course, they would live — and get her clothes ready, and then he 
would come, and they would be married — a big wedding, with 
descriptions in the newspapers. They would have a big house, 
and he would play at concerts — as she had once heard Sarasate 
play in New York — and every one would stand on tiptoe to 
see him. She sat proud and conspicuous in the front row. 
“His wife. That is his wife!” people whispered, and they 
1 drew respectfully back to let her pass, as, in a very becoming 
dress, she swept into the little room behind the platform, which 
she alone was permitted to enter. 


144 


MAURICE GUEST 


One day at this time there was a violent thunderstorm. 
Towards midday, the eastern sky grew black with clouds, 
which, for hours, had been ominously gathering; a sudden wind 
rose and swept the dust house-high through the streets; the 
thunder rumbled, and each roll came nearer. When, after a 
prolonged period of expectation, the storm finally burst, there 
was a universal sigh of relief. 

The afternoon was damply refreshing. As soon as the rain 
ceased, Maurice shut his piano, and walked at a brisk pace 
to Connewitz, his head bared beneath the overhanging branches, 
which were still weighed down by their burden of drops. At 
the W aid cafe on the bank of the river, in a thickly grown 
arbour which he entered to drink a glass of beer, he found Phil- 
adelphia Jensen and the pale little American, Fauvre, taking 
coffee. 

The lady welcomed him with a large, outstretched hand, 
in the effusively hearty manner with which she, as it 
were, took possession of people; and towards six o’clock, the 
three walked back through the woods together, Miss Jensen, 
resolute of bust as of voice, slightly ahead of her companions, 
carrying her hat in her hand, Fauvre dragging behind, hitting 
indolently at stones and shrubs, and singing scraps of melodies 
to himself in his deep baritone. 

Miss Jensen, who had once been a journalist, was an earnest 
worker for woman’s emancipation, and having now success- 
fully mounted her hobby, spoke with a thought-deadening 
eloquence. Maurice had never been called on to think 
about the matter, and listened to her w T ords absent-mindedly, 
comparing her, as she swept along, to a ship in full sail. She 
was just asserting that the ordinary German woman was little 
more than means to an end, the end being the man-child, when 
his attention was arrested, and, in an instant, jerked far away 
from Miss Jensen’s theories. As they reached the bend of a path, 
a sound of voices came to them through the trees, and on turn- 
ing a corner, Maurice caught a glimpse of two people who were 
going in the opposite direction, down a side-walk — a passing 
but vivid glimpse of a light, flowered dress, of a grey suit of 
clothes, and auburn hair. Ephie! He could have sworn to 
voice and dress; but to whom in all the world was she talking 
so confidentially? At the name that rose to his lips, he almost 
stopped short, but the next moment he was afraid lest his 
companions should also have seen who it was, and, quickening 
his steps, he incited Miss Jensen to talk on. First, however, 


MAURICE GUEST 


145 


that lady said in a surprised tone: “ Say, that was Mr. Schilsky, 
wasn’t it? Who was the lady? Did you perceive? ” So there 
was no possible doubt of it. 

After parting from his companions, he did an errand in the 
town, and from there went to the Cayhills’ Pension , determined 
to ascertain whether it had really been Ephie he had seen, and 
if so, what the meaning of it was. 

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were in the sitting-room; Johanna 
looked very surprised to see him. They had this moment 
risen from the supper-table, she told him; Ephie had only just 
got home in time. Before anything further could be said, 
Ephie herself came into the room; her face was flushed, and 
she did not seem well-pleased at his unexpected visit. She 
hardly greeted him, and instead, commenced talking about 
the weather. 

“Then you had a pleasant walk?” asked Johanna in a 
preoccupied fashion, without looking up from the letter she 
was writing; and before Maurice could speak, Ephie, fondling 
her sister’s neck, answered: “How could it be anything but 
sweet — after the rain? ” 

In the face of this frankness, it was on Maurice’s tongue to 
say: “Then it was you, I saw?” but again she did not give 
him time. Still standing behind Johanna’s chair, her eyes 
fixed on the young man’s face with a curious intentness, she 
continued : “ We walked right to Connewitz and back without 
a rest.” 

“ I don’t think you should take her so far,” said Mrs. Cay- 
hill, looking up from her book with her kindly smile. “ She 
has never been used to walking and is easily tired — aren’t you, 
my pet ? ” 

“ Yes, and then she can’t get up the next morning,” said 
Johanna, mildly dogmatic, considering the following sentence 
of her letter. 

Gradually it broke upon Maurice that Ephie had been mak- 
ing use of his name. His consternation at the discovery was 
such that he changed colour. The others, however, were both 
too engrossed to notice it. Ephie grew scarlet, but continued 
to rattle on, covering his silence. 

“ Well, perhaps to-day it was a little too far,” she ad- 
mitted. “ But mummy, I won’t have you say I’m not strong. 
Why, Herr Becker is always telling me how full my tone is 
getting. Yes indeed. And look at my muscle.” 

She turned back the loose sleeve of her blouse, baring almost 


MAURICE GUEST 


146 

the whole of her rounded arm ; then, folding it sharply to her, 
she invited one after another to test its firmness. 

“Quite a prize-fighter, I declare!” laughed Mrs. Cayhill, 
at the same time drawing her little daughter to her, to kiss 
her. But Johanna frowned, and told Ephie to put down her 
sleeve at once; there was something in the childish action that 
offended the elder sister, she did not know why. But Maurice 
had first to lay two of his fingers on the soft skin, and then to 
help her to button the cuff. 

When, soon after this, he took his leave, Ephie went 
out of the room with him. In the dark passage, she caught at 
his hand. 

“ Morry, you mustn’t tell tales on me,” she whispered ; and 
added pettishly: “Why ever did you just come to-night? ” 

He tried to see her face. “What is it all about, Ephie? ” 
he asked. “ Then it was you, I saw, in the Nonne — by the 
weir? ” 

“Me? In the Nonne!” She was genuinely surprised. 
“ You saw me? ” 

He nodded. By the light that came from the stairs as she 
opened the hall-door, she noticed that he looked troubled, and an 
impulse rose in her to throw her arms round his neck and say: 
“Yes, yes, it was me. Oh, Morry, I am so happy! ” But she 
remembered the reasons for secrecy that had been imposed on 
her, and, at the same time, felt somewhat defiantly inclined 
towards Maurice. After all, what business was it of his? 
Why should he take her to task for what she chose to do ? And 
so she merely laughed, with assumed merriment, her own 
charming, assuaging laugh. 

“ In the wood ? — you old goose ! Listen, Morry, I told them 
I had been with you, because — why, because one of the girls 
in my class asked me to go to the Cafe Francais with her, and 
we stayed too long, and ate too much ice-cream, and Joan 
doesn’t like it, and I knew she would be cross — that’s all ! Don’t 
look so glum, you silly! It’s nothing,” and she laughed again. 

As long as this laugh rang in his ears — to the bottom of the 
street, that is — he believed her. Then, the evidence of his 
senses reasserted itself, and he knew that what she had told him 
was false. He had heard her voice in the wood too distinctly 
to allow of any mistake, and she was still wearing the same 
dress. Besides, she had lied so artlessly to the others, without 
a tremor of her candid eyes — why should she not lie to him, 
too? She was less likely to be considerate of him than of 


MAURICE GUEST 


147 


Johanna. But his distress at her skill in deceit was so great 
that he said: “ Ephie, little Ephie! ” aloud to himself, just as 
he might have done had he heard that she was stricken down 
by a mortal illness. 

On the top of this, however, came less selfish feelings. What 
was almost a sense of guilt took possession of him; he felt as 
if, in some way, he were to blame for what had happened; as 
if nature had intended him to stand in the place of a brother 
to this pretty, thoughtless child. And yet what could he have 
done? He did not now see Ephie as often as formerly, and 
hardly ever alone; on looking back, he began to suspect that 
she had purposely avoided him. The exercises in harmony, 
which had previously brought them together, had been discon- 
tinued. First, she had said that her teacher was satisfied with 
what she herself could do; then, that he had advised her to 
give up harmony altogether: she would never make anything 
of it. In the light of what had come to pass, Maurice saw that 
he had let himself be duped by her; she had lied then as now. 
he had let himself be duped by her; she had lied then as 
now. 

He puzzled his brains to imagine how she had learned to 
know Schilsky in the first instance, and when the affair had 
begun: what he had overheard that afternoon implied an ad- 
vanced stage of intimacy ; and he revolved measures by means of 
which a stop might be put to it. The only course he could 
think of was to lay the matter before Johanna; and yet what 
would the use of that be ? Ephie would deny everything, make 
his story ludicrous, himself impossible, and never forgive him 
into the bargain. In the end, he might do more good by 
watching over her silently, at a distance. If it had only not 
been Schilsky who was concerned! Some of the ugly stories 
he had heard related of the young man rose up and took vivid 
shape before his eyes. If any harm came to Ephie, he alone 
would be to blame for it; not Johanna, only he knew the 
frivolous temptations the young girl was exposed to. Why, 
in Heaven’s name, had he not taken both her hands, as they 
stood in the passage, and insisted on her confessing to him? 
No, credulous as usual, he had once more allowed himself to 
be hoodwinked and put off. 

Thus he fretted, without arriving at any clearer conclusion 
than this: that he had unwittingly been made accessory to an 
unpleasant secret. But where his mind baulked, and. refused 
to work, was when he tried to understand what all this might 


148 


MAURICE GUEST 


mean to the third person involved. Did Louise know or sus- 
pect anything? Had she, perhaps, for weeks past been suffer- 
ing under the knowledge? 

He stood irresolute, at the crossing where the Mozart strasse 
joined the Promenade. A lamp-lighter was beginning his 
rounds; he came up with his long pole to the lamp at the 
corner, and, with a mild explosion, the little flame sprang into 
life. Maurice turned on his heel and went to see Madeleine. 

The latter was making her supper off tea, bread, and cold 
sausage, and when she heard that he had not eaten, she set a 
cup and plate before him, and was glad that she happened to 
be late. Propped open on the table was a Danish Grammar, 
which she conned as she ate ; for, in the coming holidays, she was 
engaged to go to Norway, as guide and travelling-companion to 
a party of Englishwomen. 

“ I had a letter from London to-day,” she said, “ with def- 
inite arrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend 
to try and master at least the rudiments of the language — 
barbarous though it is — for I want to get some good from the 
journey. And if one has one’s wits about one, much can be 
learnt from cab-drivers and railway-porters.” 

She traced on a map with her forefinger the route they pro- 
posed to follow, and laughed at the idea of the responsibility 
lying heavy on her. But when they had finished their supper, 
and she had talked informingly for a time of Norway, its 
people and customs, she looked at the young man, who sat 
irresponsive and preoccupied, and considered him attentively. 

“ Is anything the matter to-night? Or are you only tired? ” 

He was tired. But though she herself had suggested it, she 
was not satisfied with his answer. 

“ Something has bothered you. Has your work gone 
badly? ” 

No, it was nothing of that sort. But Madeleine persisted: 
could she be of any help to him? 

“ The merest trifle — not worth talking about.” 

The twilight had grown thick around them; the furniture 
of the room lost its form, and stood about in shapeless masses. 
Through the open window was heard the whistle of a distant 
train; a large fly that had been disturbed buzzed distractingly, 
undecided where to re-settle for the night. It was sultry again, 
after the rain. 

“ Look here, Maurice,” Madeleine said, when she had ob- 
served him for some time in silence. “I don’t want to be 


MAURICE GUEST 


149 


officious, but there’s something I should like to say to you. 
It’s this. You are far too soft-hearted. If you want to get on 
in life, you must think more about yourself than you do. The 
battle is to the strong, you know, and the strong, within limits, 
are certainly the selfish. Let other people look after them- 
selves; try not to mind how foolish they are — you can’t im- 
prove them. It’s harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person of 
unlimited sympathies; it’s harder to pass the maimed and crip- 
pled by, than to stop and weep over them, and feel their suf- 
ferings through yourself. But you have really something in 
you to occupy yourself with. You’re not one of those people 
— I won’t mention names! — whose own emptiness forces them 
to take an intense interest in the doings of others, and who, the 
moment they are alone with their thoughts, are bored to despera- 
tion. Just as there are people who have no talent for making 
a home home-like, and are only happy when they aie out 
of it.” 

Here she laughed at her own seriousness. 

“ But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old 
school-marm ! ” 

“You don’t practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, 
you’re mistaken. At heart, I’m a veritable egoist.” 

She contradicted him. “ I know you better than you know 
yourself.” 

He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the common- 
place words she had last said, went on sounding and resound- 
ing, until they had no more likeness to themselves. Madeleine 
rose, and pushed back her chair, with a grating noise. 

“ I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for 
foolishness. Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have 
for the holidays,” 

“ If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you,” said 
Maurice, watching her busy with the lamp. “ Clear-headed, 
and helpful to a fellow.” 

“ I suppose men always will continue to consider that the 
greatest compliment they can pay,” said Madeleine, and turned 
up the light so high that they both blinked. — And then she 
scolded the young man soundly for his intention of remaining 
in Leipzig during the holidays. 

But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that 
was foreign to her: “ I wish you had a friend.” 

It was his turn to smile. “ Have you had enough of me? ” 

Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained 


150 


MAURICE GUEST 


grave. “ I mean a man. Some one older than yourself, and 
who has had experience. The best-meaning woman in the 
world doesn’t count.” 

Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with 
profit to himself, he might have acted upon Madeleine’s in- 
troductory advice. He had been for a quick, solitary walk, 
and was returning, in the evening between nine and ten o’clock, 
along one of the paths of the wood, when suddenly, and close 
at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stopped in- 
stantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that 
Louise was one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible 
to him; but it was enough to be able to listen, unseen, to her 
voice. Hearing it like this, as something existing for itself, he 
was amazed at its depth and clearness; he felt that her per- 
sonal presence had, until now, hindered him from appreciating 
a beautiful but immaterial thing at its true worth. At first, 
like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose and fell, but 
with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice has: there 
was a note in it that might have belonged to a child’s voice; 
another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little 
reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on 
in a monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things 
worn threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. 
Gradually, it died away in the surrounding silence. There was 
no response but a gentle rustling of the leaves overhead. It 
began anew, and, in the interval, seemed to have gained in in- 
tensity ; now there was a bitterness in it which, when it swelled, 
made it give out a tone like the roughly touched strings of an 
instrument ; it seemed to be accusing, to be telling of unmerited 
suffering. And, this time, it elicited a reply, but a casual, in- 
different one, which might have related to the weather, or to 
the time of night. Louise gave a shrill laugh, and then, as 
plainly as if the words were being carved in stone before his 
eyes, Maurice heard her say: “You have never given me a 
moment’s happiness.” 

As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately 
his ear caught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same mo- 
ment, a night-wind shook the tree-tops; there was a general 
fluttering and swaying around him; and he came back to him- 
self to find that he was standing rigid, holding on to a slender 
tree that grew close by the path. His first conscious thought 
was that this wind meant rain . . . there would be another 
storm in the night . . . and the summer holidays — time of 


MAURICE GUEST 


151 

partings — were at the door. She would go away . . . and he 
would perhaps never see her again. 

Since the evening they had walked home from the theatre 
together, he had had no further chance of speaking to her. If 
they met in the street, she gave him, as Madeleine had fore- 
told of her, a nod and a smile; and from this coolness, he had 
drawn the foolish inference that she wished to avoid him. 
Abnormally sensitive, he shrank out of her way. But now, 
the mad sympathy that had permeated him on the night she 
had made him her confidant grew up in him again; it swelled 
out into something monstrous — a gigantic pity that rebounded 
on himself. For he knew now why she suffered; and he was 
cast down both for her and for himself. It seemed unnatural 
that he was debarred from giving her just a fraction of the 
happiness she craved — he, who, had there been the least need 
for it, would have lain himself down for her to tread on. And 
in some of the subsequent nights when he could not sleep, he 
composed fantastic letters to her, in which he told her this and 
more, only to colour guiltily, with the return of daylight, at the 
impertinent folly of his thoughts. 

But he could not forget the words he had heard her say; 
they haunted him like an importunate refrain. Even his busiest 
hours were set to them — “You have never given me a mo- 
ment’s happiness ” — and they were alike a torture and a joy. 


XII 


The second half of July scattered the little circle in all direc- 
tions. Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway- 
stations, seeing his friends off. One after another they passed 
into that anticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the 
prospective traveller: his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; 
he has none left for the people who are remaining behind, and 
receives their care and attention as his due. 

Dove was packed and strapped, ready to set out an hour 
after he had had his last lesson ; and while he printed labels for 
his luggage, and took a circumstantial leave of his landlady and 
her family, with whom he was a prime favourite by reason of his 
decent and orderly habits, Maurice fetched for him from the 
lending library, the pieces of music set by Schwarz as a holiday- 
task. Dove was on tenter-hooks to be off. Of late, things had 
gone superlatively well with him: he had performed with ap- 
plause in an Abendunterhaltung , and been highly commended 
by Schwarz; while, as for Ephie, she had been so sweet and 
winning, so modestly encouraging of his suit, that he had 
every reason to hope for success in this quarter also. Too 
dutiful a son, however, to take, unauthorised, such an im- 
portant step as that of proposing marriage, he was now travel- 
ling home to sound two elderly people, resident in a side street 
in Peterborough, on the advisability of an American daughter- 
in-law. 

The Cayhills had been among the first to leave, and would be 
absent till the middle of September. One afternoon, Maur- 
ice started them from the Thuringer Bahnhof , on their journey 
to Switzerland. Having seen Mrs. Cayhill comfortably set- 
tled with her bags, books and cushions, in the corner of a first- 
class carriage, and given Johanna assistance with the tickets, he 
stood till the train went, talking to Ephie ; and he long retained 
a picture of her, standing with one foot on the step, in a be- 
coming travelling-dress, a hat with a veil flying from it, and a 
small hand-bag slung across her shoulder, laughing and dim- 
pling, and well aware of the admiring glances that were cast 
at her. It was a relief to Maurice that she was going away for 
a time; his feeling of responsibility with regard to her had not 

152 


MAURICE GUEST 


153 

flagged, and he had made a point of seeing her more often, and 
of knowing more of her movements than before. As, how- 
ever, he had not observed anything further to disturb him, his 
suspicions were on the verge of subsiding — as suspicions have a 
way of doing when we wish them to — and in the last day or 
two, he had begun to feel much less sure, and to wonder if, 
after all, he had not been mistaken. 

“ I shall miss you, Morry. I almost wish I were not going,” 
said Ephie, and this was not untrue, in spite of the pretty new 
dresses her trunks contained. “ Say, I don’t believe I shall 
enjoy myself one bit. You will write, Morry, won’t you, and 
tell me what goes on ? All the news you hear and who you see 
and everything.” 

“ Be sure you write,” said Madeleine, too, when he saw her 
off early in the morning to Berlin, where she was to meet her 
English charges. “ Christiania, poste restante, till the first, 
and then Bergen. ‘ Froken Wade / don’t forget.” 

The train started ; her handkerchief fluttered from the win- 
dow until the carriage was out of sight. 

Maurice was alone; every one he knew disappeared, even 
Fiirst, who had obtained a holiday engagement in a villa near 
Dresden. An odd stillness reigned in the Braustrasse and its 
neighbourhood; from houses which had hitherto been clang- 
orous with musical noises, not a sound issued. Familiar rooms 
and lodgings were either closely shuttered, or, in process of 
scouring, hung out their curtains to flutter on the sill. 

The days passed, unmarked, eventless, like the uniform pages 
of a dull book. When the solitude grew unbearable, Maurice 
went to visit Frau Fiirst, and had his supper with the family. He 
was a welcome guest, for he not only paid for all the beer that 
was drunk, but also brought such a generous portion of sausage 
for his own supper, that it supplied one or other of the little 
girls as well. Afterwards, they sat round the kitchen-table, 
listening, the children with the old-fashioned solemnity that 
characterised them, to Frau Fiirst’s reminiscences. Otherwise, 
he hardly exchanged a word with anyone, but sat at his piano 
the livelong day. Of late, Schwarz had been somewhat cool 
and off-hand in manner with him; the master had also not 
displayed the same detailed interest in his plans for the sum- 
mer, as in those of the rest of the class. This was one reason 
why he had not gone away like every one else; the other, that 
he had been unwilling to write home for an increase of al- 
lowance. Sometimes, when the day was hot, he envied his 


154 


MAURICE GUEST 


friends refreshing themselves by wood, mountain or sea; but, 
in the main, he worked briskly at Czerny’s Fingerf ertigkeit , 
and with such perseverance that ultimately his fingers stumbled 
from fatigue. 

With the beginning of August, the heat grew oppressive; 
all day long, the sun beat, fierce and unremittent, on this city 
of the plains, and the baked pavements were warm to the 
feet. Business slackened, and the midday rest in shops and 
offices was extended beyond its usual limit. Conservatorium 
and Gewandhaus, at first given over to relays of charwomen, 
their brooms and buckets, soon lay dead and deserted, too; and 
if, in the evening, Maurice passed the former building, he 
would see the janitor sitting at leisure in the middle of the 
pavement, smoking his long black cigar. The old trees in the 
Promenade, and the young striplings that followed the river 
in the Lampestrasse, drooped their brown leaves thick with 
dust; the familiar smell of roasting coffee, which haunted most 
house- and stair-ways, was intensified; and out of drains and 
rivers rose nauseous and penetrating odours, from which there 
was no escape. Every three or four days, when the atmos- 
phere of the town had reached a pitch of unsavouriness which 
it seemed impossible to surpass, sudden storms swept up, tropi- 
cal in their violence: blasts of thunder cracked like splitting 
beams; lightning darted along the narrow streets; rain fell in 
white, sizzling sheets. But the morning after, it was as hot 
as ever. 

Maurice grew so accustomed to meet no one he knew, that 
one afternoon towards the middle of August, he was pulled up 
by a jerk of surprise in front of the Pleissenburg , on stumbling 
across Heinrich Krafft. He had stopped and impulsively 
greeted the young man, before he recalled his previous antip- 
athy to him. 

Krafft was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, 
and, on being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat mood- 
ily at Maurice. The next moment, however, he laid a hand 
on the lappel of Maurice’s coat, and, without preamble, burst 
into a witty and obscene anecdote, which had evidently been in 
his mind when they met. This story, and the fact that, by the 
North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were 
the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. 
His previous impatience with such eccentricity returned, but 
none the less, he looked grudgingly after the other’s vanishing 
form. 


MAURICE GUEST 


i55 


A day or two later, towards evening, he saw Krafft again. 
As he was going through an outlying street, he came upon a 
group of children, who were amusing themselves by teasing a 
cat ; the animal had been hit in the eye by a stone, and cowered, 
terrified and blinded, against the wall of a house. The children 
formed a half circle round it, and two of the biggest boys held 
a young and lively dog by the collar, inciting it and restraining 
it, and revelling in the cat’s convulsive starts at each capering 
bark. 

While Maurice was considering how to expostulate with 
them, Krafft came swiftly up behind, jerked two of the chil- 
dren apart, and, with a deft and perfectly noiseless movement, 
caught up the cat and hid its head under his coat. Then, cuff- 
ing the biggest boy, he kicked the dog, and ordered the rest to 
disperse. The children did so lingeringly; and once out of his 
reach, stood and mocked him. 

He begged Maurice to accompany him to his lodgings, and 
there Maurice held the animal, a large, half-starved street- 
cat, while Krafft, on his knees before it, examined the wound. 
As he did this, he crooned in a wordless language, and the cat 
was quiet, in spite of the pain he caused it. But directly he 
took his hands off it, it jumped from the table, and fled under 
the furthest corner of the sofa. 

Krafft next fetched milk and a saucer, from a cupboard in 
the wall, and went down on his knees again: while Maurice 
sat and watched and wondered at his tireless endeavours to 
induce the animal to advance. He explained his proceedings 
in a whisper. 

“ If I put the saucer down and leave it,” he said, “ it won’t 
help at all. A cat’s confidence must be won straight away.” 

He was still in this position, making persuasive little noises, 
when the door opened, and Avery Hill, his companion of a pre- 
vious occasion, entered. At the sight of Krafft crouching on the 
floor, she paused with her hand on the door, and looked from 
him to Maurice. 

“ Heinz ? ” she said interrogatively. Then she saw the 
saucer of milk, and understood. “Heinz!” she said again; 
and this time the word was a reprimand. 

“ Ssh ! — be quiet,” said Krafft peevishly, without looking up. 

The girl took no notice of Maurice’s attempt to greet her. 
Letting fall on the grand piano, some volumes of music she 
was carrying, she continued sternly: “Another cat! — oh, it is 
abominable of you! This is the third he has picked up this 


MAURICE GUEST 


156 

year,” she said explanatorily, yet not more to Maurice than to 
herself. “ And the last was so dirty and destructive that Frau 
Schulz threatened to turn him out, if he did not get rid of it. 
He knows as well as I do that he cannot keep a cat here.” 

Her placidly tragic face had grown hard ; and altogether, the 
anger she displayed seemed out of proportion to the trival of- 
fence. 

Krafft remained undisturbed. “ It’s not the least use scold- 
ing. Go and make it right with the old crow. — Come, puss, 
come.” 

The girl checked the words that rose to her lips, gave a 
slight shrug, and went out of the room. They heard her, in 
the passage, disputing wdth the landlady, who was justly in- 
dignant. 

“ If it weren’t for you, Fraulein, I wouldn’t keep him an- 
other day,” she declared. 

Meanwhile the cat, which, in the girl’s presence, had shrunk 
still further into its hiding-place, began to make advances. It 
crept a step forward, retreated again, stretched out its nose to 
sniff at the milk, and, all of a sudden, emerged and drank 
greedily. 

Krafft touched its head, and the animal paused in its hungry 
gulping to rub its back against the caressing hand. When the 
last drop of milk was finished, it withdrew to its corner, but 
less suspiciously. 

Krafft rose to his feet and stretched himself, and when 
Avery returned, he smiled at her. 

“ Now then, is it all right? ” 

She did not reply, but went to the piano, to search for 
something among the scattered music. Krafft clasped his hands 
behind his head, and leaning against the table, watched her 
with an ironical curl of the lip. 

" O Lene! Lene! O Magdalene! ” he sang under his 
breath; and, for the second time, Maurice received the im- 
pression that a by-play was being carried on between these two. 

“ Look at this,” said Krafft after a pause. “ Here, ladies 
and gentlemen, is one of those rare persons who have a jot of 
talent in them, and off she goes — I don’t mean at this moment, 
but to-morrow, the day after, every day — to waste it in teach- 
ing children finger-exercises. If you ask her why she does it, 
she will tell you it is necessary to live. Necessary to live! — 
who has ever proved that it is?” 

For an instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash 


MAURICE GUEST 


157 


out a bitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she 
showed the same self-control as before, and went, without a 
word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, 
and when she reappeared, carried what was unmistakably a 
bundle of soiled linen, going away with this on one arm, the 
volumes of music she had picked out on the other. She did not 
wish the young men good-night, but, in passing Maurice, she 
said in an unfriendly tone: “Do you know what time it is?” 
and to Krafft: “ It is late, Heinz, you are not to play.” 

The door had barely closed behind her, when Krafft broke 
into the loud, repellent laugh that had so jarred on Maurice 
at their former meeting. He had risen at once, and now said 
he must go. But Krafft would not hear of it; he pressed him 
into his seat again, with an effusive warmth of manner. 

“ Don’t mind her. Stay, like a good fellow. Of course, I 
am going to play to you.” 

He flicked the keys of the piano with his handkerchief, ad- 
justed the distance of his seat, threw back his head, and half 
closing his eyes, began to play. Except for the unsteady 
flickerings cast on the wall by a street-lamp, the room was soon 
in darkness. 

Maurice resumed his seat reluctantly. He had been dragged 
upstairs against his will; and throughout the foregoing scene, 
had sat an uncomfortable spectator. He had as little desire 
for the girl to return and find him there, as for Krafft to play 
to him. But no excuse for leaving offered itself, and each mo- 
ment made it harder to interrupt the player, who had promptly 
forgotten the fact of his presence. 

After he had listened for a time, however, Maurice ceased 
to think of escaping. Madeleine had once alluded to Krafft’s 
skill as an interpreter of Chopin, but, all the same, he had not 
expected anything like what he now heard, and at first he 
could not make anything of it. He had hitherto only known 
Chopin’s music as played in the sentimental fashion of the Eng- 
lish drawing-room. Here, now, came some one who made it 
clear that, no matter how pessimistic it appeared on the surface, 
this music was, at its core an essentially masculine music; it 
kicked desperately against the pricks of existence ; what failed it 
was only the last philosophic calm. He could not, of course, 
know that various small things had combined to throw the 
player into one of his most prodigal moods: the rescue and 
taming of the cat, the passage-at-arms with Avery, her stimu- 
lating forbiddal, and, last and best, the one silent listener in the 


MAURICE GUEST 


158 

dark — this stranger, picked up at random in the streets, who had 
never yet heard him play, and to whom he might reveal himself 
with an indecency that friendship precluded. 

When at length, Frau Schulz entered, in her bed-jacket, to 
say that it was long past ten o’clock, Krafft wakened as if out 
of a trance, and hid his eyes from the light. Frau Schulz, 2 
robust person, disregarded his protests, and herself locked the 
piano and took the key. 

“ She makes me promise to,” she whispered to Maurice, 
pointing over her shoulder at an imaginary person. “ If I 
didn’t, he’d go on all night. He’s no more fit to look after 
himself than a baby — and he gets it again with his boots in the 
morning. — Yes, yes, call me names if it pleases you. Names 
don’t kill. And if I am a hag, you’re a rascal, that’s what you 
are ! The way you treat that poor, good creature makes one’s 
blood boil.” 

Krafft waved her away, and opening the window, leaned out 
on the sill: a wave of warm air filled the room. Maurice rose 
with renewed decision, and sought his hat. But Krafft also 
took his down from a peg. “ Yes, let us go out.” 

It was a breathless August night, laden with intensified 
scents and smells, and the moonlight lay thick and white on 
the ground: a night to provoke to extravagant follies. In the 
utter stillness of the woods, the )'oung men passed from places 
of inky blackness into bluish white patches, dropped through 
the trees like monstrous silver thalers. The town lay behind 
them in a glorifying haze; the river stretched silver-scaled in 
the moonlight, like a gigantic fish-back. 

Krafft walked in front of his companion, in preoccupied 
silence. His slender hands, dangling loosely, still twitched 
from their recent exertions, and from time to time, he turned 
the palms outward, with an impatient gesture. Maurice wished 
himself alone. He was not at ease under this new companion- 
ship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed, a strong mental 
antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the moody 
creature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, 
he had been asked to give voice to his feelings, the term 
“ crazy idiot ” would have been the first to rise to his lips. 

Suddenly, without turning, or slackening his pace, Krafft 
commenced to speak: at first in a low voice, as if he were 
thinking aloud. But one word gave another, his thoughts 
came rapidly, he began to gesticulate, and finally, wrought on 
by the beauty of the night, by this choice moment for speech, 


MAURICE GUEST 


159 


still excited by his own playing, and in an infinite need of 
expression, he swept the silence before him with the force of 
a flood set free. If he thought Maurice were about to inter- 
rupt him, he made an imploring gesture, and left what he was 
saying unfinished, to spring over to the next theme ready in his 
brain. Names jostled one another on his tongue: he passed 
from Beethoven and Chopin to Berlioz and Wagner, to Liszt 
and Richard Strauss — and his words were to Maurice like the 
unrolling of a great scroll. In the same breath, he was with 
Nietzsche, and Apollonic and Dionysian; and from here he 
went on to Richard Dehmel, to Anatol , and the gentle “ Loris ” 
of the early verses; to Max Klinger, and the propriety of 
coloured sculpture; to Papa Hamlet and the future of the 
Lied. Maurice, listening intently, had fleeting glimpses into 
a land of which he knew nothing. He kept as still as a mouse, 
in order not to betray his ignorance ; for Krafft was not didactic, 
and talked as if the subjects he touched on were as familiar to 
Maurice as to himself. On the other hand, Maurice believed 
it was a matter of indifference to him whether he was under- 
stood or not; he spoke for the pure joy of talking, out of the 
motley profusion of his knowledge. 

Meanwhile, he had grown personal. And while he was still 
speaking with fervour of Vienna — which was his home — of 
gay, melancholy Wien, he flung round and put a question to 
his companion. 

“ Do you ever think of death ? ” 

Maurice had been the listener for so long that he started. 

“Death?” he echoed, and was as much embarrassed as 
though asked whether he believed in God. “ I don’t know. No, 
I don’t think I do. Why should one think of death when one 
is alive and well ? ” 

Krafft laughed at this, with a pitying irony. “ Happy you ! ” 
he said. “ Happy you ! ” His voice sank, and he continued 
almost fearfully: “ I have the vision of it before me, always — ■ 
wherever I go. Listen; I will tell you; it is like this.” He 
laid his hand on Maurice’s arm, and drew him nearer. “ I 
know — no matter how strong and sound I may be at this mo- 
ment; no matter how I laugh, or weep, or play the fool; no 
matter how little thought I give it, or whether I think about 
it all day long — I know the hour will come, at last, when I 
shall gasp, choke, grow black in the face, in the vain struggle 
for another single mouthful of that air which has always been 
mine at will. And no one will be able to help me ; there is no 


i6o 


MAURICE GUEST 


escape from that hour; no power on earth can keep it from me. 
And it is all a matter of chance when it happens — a great lot- 
tery: one draws to-day, one to-morrow; but my turn will surely 
come, and each day that passes brings me twenty-four hours 
nearer the end.” He drew still closer to Maurice. “ Tell me, 
have you never stood before a doorway — the doorway of some 
strange house that you have perhaps never consciously gone 
past before — and waited, with the atrocious curiosity that 
death and its hideous paraphernalia waken in one, for a coffin 
to be carried out? — the coffin of an utter stranger, who is of 
interest to you now, for the first and the last time. And have 
you not thought to yourself, with a shudder, that some day, 
in this selfsame way, under the same indifferent sky, among a 
group of loiterers as idly curious as these, you yourself will be 
carried out, feet foremost, like a bale of goods, like useless 
lumber, all will and dignity gone from you, never to enter 
there again? — there, where all the little human things you have 
loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just as you left 
them — the book you laid down, the coat you wore — now all of 
a greater worth than you. You are mere dead flesh, and 
behind the horrid lid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and 
half-closed eyes, and the chief desire of every one, even of those 
you have loved most, is to be rid of you, to be out of reach 
of sight and smell of you. And so, after being carted, and 
jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into a hole, and your 
body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to the touch — oh, that 
awful icy softness! — your flesh will begin to rot, to be such 
that not your nearest friend would touch you. God, it is un- 
bearable! ” 

He wiped his forehead, and Maurice was silent, not knowing 
what to say; he felt that such rational arguments as he might 
be able to offer, would have little value in the face of this in- 
tensely personal view, which was stammered forth with the 
bitterness of an accusation. But as they crossed the suspension- 
bridge, Krafft stopped, and stood looking at the water, which 
glistened in the moonlight like a living thing. 

“ No, it is impossible for me to put death out of my mind,” 
he went on. “ And yet^ a spring into this silver fire down here 
would end all that, and satisfy one’s curiosity as well. Why 
is one not readier to make the spring? — and what would one’s 
sensations be? The mad rush through the air — the crash — 
the sinking in the awful blackness . . 

“ Those of fear and cold. You would wish yourself out 


MAURICE GUEST 161 

again,” answered Maurice; and as Krafft nodded, without 
seeming to resent his tone, he ventured to put forward a few 
points for the other side of the question. He suggested that 
always to be brooding over death unfitted you for life. Every 
one had to die when his time came; it was foolish to look upon 
your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, when ) 
sensation had left you — the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked \ 
to call it — what did it matter what afterwards became of your / 
body? It was, then, in reality, nothing but lumber, fresh \ 
nourishment for the soil; and it was morbid to care so much ) 
how it was treated, just because it had once been your tene- f 
ment, when it was now as worthless as the crab’s empty shell. 

He stuttered this out piece-wise, in his halting German; 
then paused, not sure how his companion would take the 
didactic tone he had fallen into. But Krafft had turned, and 
was gazing at him, considering him attentively for the first 
time. When Maurice ceased to speak, he nodded a hasty as- 
sent: “ Yes, yes, it is quite true. Go on.” And as the former, 
having nothing more to say, was mute, he added: “You are 
like some one I once knew. He was a great musician. I saw 
him die; he died by inches; it lasted for months; he could 
neither die nor live.” 

“ Why do you brood over these things, if you find them so 
awful? Are you not afraid your nerves will go through with 
you, and make you do something foolish ? ” asked Maurice, and 
was himself astonished at his boldness. 

“ Of course I am. My life is a perpetual struggle against 
suicide,” answered Krafft. 

In the distance, a church-clock struck a quarter to twelve, 
and it was on Maurice’s tongue to suggest that they should 
move homewards, when, with one of his unexpected transitions, 
Krafft turned to him and said in a low voice: “ What do you 
say? Shall you and I be friends? ” 

Maurice hesitated, in some embarrassment. “ Why yes, I 
should be very glad.” 

“ And you will let me say ‘ du y to you? ” 

“ Certainly. If you are sure you won’t regret it in the 
morning.” 

Krafft stretched out his hand. As Maurice held in his the 
fine, slim fingers, which seemed mere skin and muscle, a 
hitherto unknown feeling of kindliness came over him for the 
young man at his side. At this moment, he had the lively 
sensation that he was the stronger and wiser of the two, and 


162 MAURICE GUEST 

that it was even a little beneath him to take the other too 
seriously. 

“ You think so poorly of me then? You think no good thing 
can come out of me? ” asked Krafft, and there was an appeal- 
ing note in his voice, which, but a short time back, had been 
so overbearing. 

Had Maurice known him better, he would have promptly 
retorted : “ Don’t be a fool.” As it was, he laughed. “ Who 
am I to sit in judgment? The only thing I do know is, that 
if I had your talent — no, a quarter of it — I should pull myself 
together and astonish the world.” 

“ It sounds so easy; but I have too many doubts of myself,” 
said Krafft, and laid his hand on Maurice’s shoulder. “ And 
I have never had anyone to keep me up to the mark — till now. 
I have always needed some one like you. You are strong and 
sympathetic; and one has the feeling that you understand.” 

Maurice was far from certain that he did. However, he 
answered in a frank way, doing his best to keep down the sen- 
timental tone that had invaded the conversation. At heart, 
he was little moved by this new friendship, which had begun 
with the word itself ; he told himself that it was only a whim of 
Krafft’s, which would be forgotten in the morning. But, as 
they stood thus on the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, he did not 
understood how he could ever have taken anything this frail 
creature did, amiss. At the moment, there was a clinging help- 
c mess about Krafft, which instinctively roused his manlier 
He said to himself that he had done wrong in lightly 
; > icmning his companion; and, impelled by this sudden burst 
/ rotectiveness, he seized the moment, and spoke earnestly to 
Krafft of earnest things, of duty, not only to one’s fellows, but 
to oneself and one’s abilities, of the inspiring gain of unre- 
mitted endeavour. 

Afterwards, they sauntered home — first to Maurice’s lodging, 
then to Krafft’s, and once again to Maurice’s. At this stage, 
Krafft was frankness itself ; Maurice learnt to his surprise that 
the slim, boyish lad at his side was over twenty-seven years of 
age; that, for several semesters, Krafft had studied medicine in 
Vienna, then had thrown up this “ disgusting occupation,” to 
become a clerk in a wealthy uncle’s counting-house. From this, 
he had drifted into journalism, and finally, at the instigation of 
Hans von Biilow, to music; he had been for two and a half 
years with Biilow, on travel, and in Hamburg, and was at 
present in Leipzig solely to have his “ fingers put in order.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


163 

His plans for the future were many, and widely divergent. At 
one time, a musical career tempted him irresistibly; every one 
but Schwarz — this finger-machine, this generator of living met- 
ronomes — 'believed that he could make a name for himself as a 
player of Chopin. At other times, and more often, he con- 
templated retiring from the world and entering a monastery. 
He spoke with a morbid horror — yet as if the idea of it fas- 
cinated him — of the publicity of the concert-platform, and 
painted in glowing colours a monastery he knew of, standing 
on a wooded hill, not far from Vienna. He had once spent 
several weeks there, recovering from an illness, and the gardens, 
the trimly bedded flowers, the glancing sunlight in the utter 
silence of the corridors, were things he could not forget. He 
had lain day for day on a garden-bench, reading Novalis, and 
it still seemed to him that the wishless happiness of those days 
was the greatest he had known. 

Beside this, Maurice’s account of himself sounded tame and 
unimportant; he felt, too, that the circumstances of English 
life were too far removed from his companion’s sphere, for the 
latter to be able to understand them. 

On waking next morning, Maurice recalled the incidents of 
the evening with a smile; felt a touch of warmth at the re- 
membrance of the moment when he had held Krafft’s hand in 
his; then classed the whole episode as strained, and dismissed 
it from his mind. He had just shut the piano, after a busy 
forenoon, when Krafft burst in, his cheeks pink with haste 
and excitement. He had discovered a room to let, in the 
house he lived in, and nothing would satisfy him but that 
Maurice should come instantly to see it. Laughing at his 
eagerness, Maurice put forward his reasons for preferring to 
remain where he was. But Krafft would take no denial, and 
not wishing to hurt his feelings, Maurice gave way, and agreed 
at least to look at the room. 

It was larger and more cheerful than his own, and had also 
a convenient alcove for the bedstead; and after inspecting it, 
Maurice felt willing to expend the extra marks it cost. They 
withdrew to Krafft’s room to come to a decision. There, 
however, they found Avery Hill, who, as soon as she heard 
what they contemplated, put a veto on it. Growing pale, as 
she always did where others would have flushed, she said: 
“ It is an absurd idea — sheer nonsense ! I won’t have it, under- 
stand that ! Pray, excuse me,” she continued to Maurice, speak- 
ing in a more friendly tone than she had yet used to him, “ but 


MAURICE GUEST 


164 

you must not listen to him. It is just one of his whims — 
nothing more. In less than a week, you would wish yourself 
away again. You have no idea how changeable he is — how 
impossible to live with.” 

Maurice hastened to reassure her. Krafft did not speak; he 
stood at the window, with his back to them, his forehead pressed 
against the glass. 

So Maurice continued to live in the Braustrasse, under the 
despotic rule of Frau Krause, who took every advantage of his 
good-nature. But after this, not a day passed without his 
seeing Krafft; the latter sought him out on trivial pretexts. 
Maurice hardly recognised him: he was gentle, amiable, and 
amenable to reason ; he subordinated himself entirely to Maurice, 
and laid an ever-increasing weight on his opinion. Maur- 
ice became able to wind him round his finger ; and the 
hint of a reproof from him served to throw Krafft into a state 
of nervous depression. Without difficulty, Maurice found him- 
self to rights in his role of mentor, and began to flatter him- 
self that he would ultimately make of Krafft a decent member 
of society. As it was, he soon induced his friend to study in 
a more methodical way; they practised for the same number of 
hours in the forenoon, and met in the afternoon; and Krafft 
only sometimes broke through this arrangement, by appearing 
in the Braustrasse early in the morning, and, despite remon- 
strance, throwing himself on the sofa, and remaining there, while 
Maurice practised. The latter ended by growing accustomed 
to this whim as to several other things that had jarred on him — 
such as Krafft’s love for a dirty jest — and overlooked or for- 
gave them. At first embarrassed by the mushroom growth of 
a friendship he had not invited, he soon grew genuinely at- 
tached to Krafft, and missed him when he was absent from 
him. 

Avery Hill could hardly be termed third in the alliance; 
Maurice’s advent had thrust her into the background, where 
she kept watch over their doings with her cold, disdainful eye. 
Maurice was not clear how she regarded his intrusion. Some- 
times, particularly when she saw the improvement in Heinrich’s 
way of life, she seemed to tolerate his presence gladly ; at others 
again, her jealous aversion to him was too open to be overlooked. 
The jealousy was natural; he was an interloper, and Heinz 
neglected her shamefully for him; but there was something 
else behind it, another feeling, which Maurice could not make 
out. He by no means understood the relationship that existed 


MAURICE GUEST 


165 

between his friend and this girl of the stone-grey eyes and 
stern, red lips. The two lived almost door by door, went in 
and out of each other’s rooms at all hours, and yet, he had 
never heard them exchange an affectionate word, or seen a 
mark of endearment pass between them. Avery’s attachment — 
if such it could be called — was noticeable only in the many 
small ways in which she cared for Krafft’s comfort ; her manner 
with him was invariably severe and distant, with the exception 
of those occasions when a seeming trifle raised in her a burst 
of the dull, passionate anger, beneath which Krafft shrank. 
Maurice believed that his friend would be happier away from 
her; in spite of her fresh colouring, he, Maurice, found her 
wanting in attraction, nothing that a woman ought to be. 
But her name was rarely mentioned between them; Krafft was, 
as a rule, reticent concerning her, and when he did speak of 
her, it was in a tone of such contempt that Maurice was glad 
to shirk the subject. 

“ It’s all she wants,” Krafft had replied, when his companion 
ventured to take her part. “ She wouldn’t thank you to be 
treated differently. Believe me, women are all alike; they are 
made to be trodden on. Ill-usage brings out their good 
points — 'just as kneading makes dough light. Let them alone, 
or pamper them, and they spread like a weed, and choke you ” 
• — and he quoted a saying about going to women and not for- 
getting the whip, at which Maurice stood aghast. 

“ But why, if you despise a person like that — why have her 
always about you? ” he cried, at the end of a flaming plea for 
woman’s dignity and worth. 

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. “ I suppose the truth is we 
are dependent on them — yes, dependent, from the moment we 
are laid in the cradle. It’s a woman who puts on our first 
clothes and a woman who puts on our last. But why talk 
about these things?” — he slipped his arm through Maurice’s. 
“Tell me about yourself; and when you are tired of talking, I 
will play.” 

It usually ended in his playing. They ranged through the 
highways and byways of music. 

One afternoon — it was a warm, wet, grey day towards the 
end of August — Maurice found Krafft in a strangely apathetic 
mood. The weather, this moist warmth, had got on his nerves, 
he said ; he had been unable to settle to anything ; was weighed 
down by a lassitude heavier than iron. When Maurice entered, 
he was stretched on the sofa, with closed eyes; on his chest 


MAURICE GUEST 


1 66 

slept Wotan, the one-eyed cat, now growing sleek and fat. 
While Maurice was trying to rally him, Krafft sprang up. 
With a precipitance that was the extreme opposite of his previous 
sloth, he lowered both window-blinds, and, lighting two candles, 
set them on the piano, where they dispersed the immediate 
darkness, but no more. 

“ I am going to play Tristan to you.” 

Maurice had learnt by this time that it was useless to try 
to thwart Krafft. He laughed and nodded, and having noth- 
ing in particular to do, lay down in the latter’s place on the 
sofa. 

Krafft shook his hair back, and began the prelude to the 
opera in a rapt, ecstatic way, finding in the music an outlet 
for all his nervousness. At first, he played from memory ; when 
this gave out, he set the piano-score up before him, then forgot 
it again, and went on playing by heart. Sometimes he sang 
the different parts, in a light, sweet tenor; sometimes recited 
them, with dramatic fervour. Only he never ceased to play, 
never gave his hearer a moment in which to recover himself. 

Frau Schulz’s entry with the lamp, and her grumblings at 
the “ unversch amt e Spektakel " passed unheeded. A strength 
that was more than human seemed to take possession of the frail 
youth at the piano. Evening crept on afternoon, night on even- 
ing, and still he continued, drunk with the most emotional 
music conceived by a human brain. 

Even when hands and fingers could do no more, the frenzy 
that was in him would not let him rest: he paced the room, 
and talked — talked for hours, his eyes ablaze. A church-clock 
struck ten, then half-past, then eleven, and not for a moment 
was he still; his speech seemed, indeed, to gather impetus as it 
advanced, like a mountain torrent. 

Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a vehement defence 
of anti-Semitism, to which he had been led by the misdeeds of 
those “ arch-charlatans,” Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, he stopped 
short, like a run-down clock, and, falling into a chair before 
the table, buried his face in his arms. ’ There was silence, the 
more intense for all that had preceded it. Wotan wakened 
from sleep, and was heard to stretch his limbs, with a yawn and 
a sigh. The spell was broken; Maurice, his head in a whirl, 
rose stiff and cramped from his uncomfortable position on the 
sofa. 

“ You rascal, you make one lose all sense of time. And I 
am starving. I must snatch something at Canitz’s as I go by.” 


MAURICE GUEST 167 

Krafft started, and raised a haggard face with twitching lips. 
“ You are not going to leave me? — like this? ” 

Maurice was both hungry and tired — worn out, in fact. 

“ We will go somewhere in the town,” said Krafft. “And 
then for a walk. The rain has stopped — look! ” 

He drew up one of the blinds, and they saw that the stars 
were shining. 

“ Yes, but what about to-morrow? — and to-morrow’s work? ” 

“ To-morrow may never come. And to-night is.” 

“ Those are only words. Do you know the time ? ” 

Krafft turned quickly from the window. “And if I make 
it a test of the friendship you have professed for me, that 
you stay here with me to-night? — You can sleep on the sofa.” 

“Why on earth get personal?” said Maurice; he could 
not find his hat, which had fallen in a dark corner. “ Heinz, 
dear boy, be reasonable. Come, give me the house-key — like 
a good fellow.” 

“ It’s the first — the only thing, I have asked of you.” 

“ Nonsense. You have asked dozens.” 

Krafft took a few steps towards him, and threw the key 
on the floor at his feet. Wotan, who was at the door, mewing 
to be let out, sprang back, in affright. 

“ Go, go, go ! ” Krafft cried. “ I never want to see you 
again.” 

Earlier than usual the next morning, Maurice returned to 
set things right, and to laugh with Heinz at their extravagance 
of the night before. But Krafft was not to be seen. From 
Frau Schulz, who flounced past him in the passage, first with 
hot water, then with black coffee, Maurice learned that Krafft 
had been brought home early that morning, in a disgraceful 
state of intoxication. Frau Schulz still boiled at the remem- 
brance. 

" So J n Schweirij so *n Schwein !” she cried. “But this 
time he goes. I have said it before and, fool that I am, have 
always let them persuade me. But this is the end. Not a 
day after the fifteenth will I have him in the house.” 

Maurice slipped away. 

Two days passed before he saw his friend again. He found him 
pale and dejected, with reddish, heavy eyes and a sneering smile. 
He was wholly changed; his^ words were tainted with the per- 
verse irony, which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had 
made his manner so repellent. But now, Maurice was not, at 
once, frightened away by it; he could not believe Heinrich’s 


i68 


MAURICE GUEST 


pique was serious, and gave himself trouble to win his friend 
back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and apologetic, 
and all this without being conscious of having done wrong. 

“ I think you had better leave him alone,” said Avery, after 
watching his fruitless efforts. “ He doesn’t want you.” 

It was true; now Krafft had no thought for anyone but 
Avery. It was Avery here, and Avery there. He called her 
by a pet name, was anxious for her comfort, and hung affec- 
tionately on her arm. — The worst of it was, that he did not 
seem in the least ashamed of his fickleness. 

Maurice made one further attempt to move him, then, hurt 
and angry, intruded no more. At first, he was chiefly angry. 
But, gradually, the hurt deepened, and became a sense of in- 
jury, which made him avoid the street Krafft lived in, and 
shun him when they met. He missed him, after the close 
companionship of the past weeks, and felt as if he had been sud- 
denly deprived of a part of himself. And he would no doubt 
have missed him more keenly still, if, just at this juncture, his 
attention had not been engrossed by another and more important 
matter. 


XIII 


The commencement of the new term had just assembled 
the incoming students to sign their names in the venerable roll- 
book, when the report spread that Schilsky was willing to 
play his symphonic poem, Zarathustra , to those of his friends 
who cared to hear it. Curiosity swelled the number, and Fiirst 
lent his house for the occasion. 

“ You’ll come, of course,” said the latter to Maurice, as 
they left Schwarz’s room after their lesson; and Madeleine 
said the same thing while driving home from the railway-station, 
where Maurice had met her. She was no more a friend of 
Schilsky ’s than he was, but she certainly intended to be present, 
to hear what kind of stuff he had turned out. 

On the evening of the performance, Maurice and she walked 
together to the Brandvorwerkstrasse. Madeleine had still much 
to say. She had returned from her holiday in the best of health 
and spirits, liberally rewarded for her trouble, and possessed of 
four new friends, who, no doubt, would all be of use to her when 
she settled in England again. This was to be her last winter in 
Leipzig, and she was drawing up detailed plans of work. From 
now on, she intended to take private lessons from Schwarz, in 
addition to those she received in the class. 

“ Even though they do cost ten marks each, it makes him 
ever so much better disposed towards you.” 

She also told him that she had found a letter from Louise 
waiting for her, in which the latter announced her return for the 
following week. Louise wrote from England, and all her 
cry was to be back in Leipzig. 

“ Of course — now he is here,” commented Madeleine. “ You 
know, I suppose, that he has been travelling with Zeppelin? 
He has the luck of I don’t know what.” 

The Cayhills would be absent till the middle of the month; 
Maurice had received from Ephie one widely written note, 
loud in praise of a family of “ perfectly sweet Americans,” 
whom they had learnt to know in Interlaken, but also ex- 
pressing eagerness to be at home again in “ dear old Leipzig.” 

169 


170 MAURICE GUEST 

Dove had arrived a couple of days ago — and here Madeleine 
laughed. 

“ He is absolutely shiny with resolution,” she declared. 
“ Mind, Maurice, if he takes you into confidence — as he prob- 
ably will — you are not on any account to dissuade him from 
proposing. A snub will do him worlds of good.” 

They were not the first to climb the ill-lighted stair that 
wound up to the Firsts’ dwelling. The entry-door on the 
fourth storey stood open, and a hum of voices came from the 
sitting-room. The circular hat-stand in the passage was 
crowded with motley headgear. 

As they passed the kitchen, the door of which was ajar, Frau 
Fiirst peeped through the slit, and seeing Maurice, called him 
in. The coffee-pot was still on the stove; he must sit down 
and drink a cup of coffee. 

“ There is plenty of time. Schilsky has not come yet, and 
I have only this moment sent Adolfchen for the beer.” 

Maurice asked her if she were not coming in to hear the 
music. She laughed good-naturedly at the idea. 

“ Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all 
you young people? No, no, I can hear just as well where I 
am. When my good husband had his evenings, it was always 
from the kitchen that I listened.” 

Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, 
she said: “You will hear something good to-night, Herr 
Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! 
This is not the usual work of a pupil. It has form, and it has 
ideas, and it is new and daring. I know one of the motives 
from hearing Franz play it,” and she hummed a theme as she 
replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. “ For 
such a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, 
depend upon it, he will.” 

Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three 
of the children sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a 
finger on her lips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the 
table and asked Maurice if he could keep a secret. 

“ He is going away,” she whispered. 

Maurice stared at her. “ Going away? Who is? What 
do you mean?” he asked, and was so struck by her peculiar 
manner that he set his cup down untouched. 

“ Why Schilsky, of, course.” She thought his astonishment 
was disbelief, and nodded confirmingly. “ Yes, yes, he is going 
away. And soon, too.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


171 

“ How do you know? ” cried Maurice. Sitting back in his 
chair, he stemmed his hands against the edge of the table, and 
looked challengingly at Frau Fiirst. 

“ Ssh ! — not so loud,” said the latter. “ It’s a secret, a dead 
secret — though I’m sure I don’t know why. Franz ” 

At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. 
He looked distrustfully at his whispering mother. 

“Now then, mother, haven’t you got that beer yet?” he 
demanded. His genial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, 
when he entered his home circle, and he was particularly gruff 
with this adoring woman. 

“ Gleich, Franzcherij gleich ” she answered soothingly, and 
whisked about her work again, with the air of one caught 
napping. 

Maurice followed Fiirst’s invitation to join the rest of the 
party. 

The folding-doors between the “ best room ” and the ad- 
joining bedroom had been opened wide, and the guests were 
distributed over the two rooms. The former was brilliantly 
lighted by three lamps and two candles, and all the sitting-ac- 
commodation the house contained was ranged in a semicircle 
round the grand piano. Here, not a place was vacant; those 
who had come late were in the bedroom, making shift with 
whatever offered. Two girls and a young man, having pushed 
back the feather-bed, sat on the edge of the low wooden bedstead, 
with their arms interlaced to give them a better balance. 
Maurice found Madeleine on a rickety little sofa that stood 
at the foot of the bed. Dove sat on a chest of drawers next 
the sofa, his long legs dangling in the air. Beside Madeleine, 
with his head on her shoulder, was Krafft. 

“ Oh, there you are,” cried Madeleine. “ Well, I did 
my best to keep the place for you; but it was of no use, as 
you see. Just sit down, however. Between us, we’ll squeeze 
him properly.” 

Maurice was glad that the room, which was lighted only 
by one small lamp, was in semi-darkness; for, at the sound of 
his own voice, it suddenly became clear to him that the piece 
of gossip Frau Fiirst had volunteered, had been of the nature 
of a blow. Schilsky’s departure threatened, in a way he post- 
poned for the present thinking out, to disturb his life; and, in 
an abrupt need of sympathy, he laid his hand on Krafft’s knee. 

“ Is it you, old man ? What have you been doing with your- 
self?” 


172 MAURICE GUEST 

Krafft gave him one of those looks which, in the early days 
of their acquaintance, had proved so disconcerting — a look of 
struggling recollection. 

“ Oh, nothing in particular,” he replied, without hostility, 
but also without warmth. His mind was not with his words, 
and Maurice withdrew his hand. 

Madeleine leaned forward, dislodging Krafft’s head from its 
resting-place. 

“ How long have you two been ‘ du y to each other ? ” she 
asked, and at Maurice’s curt reply, she pushed Krafft from her. 
“ Sit up and behave yourself. One would think you had an 
evil spirit in you to-night.” 

Krafft was nervously excited: bright red spots burnt on 
his cheeks, his hands twitched, and he jerked forward in his 
seat and threw himself back again, incessantly. 

“ No, you are worse than a mosquito,” cried Madeleine, los- 
ing patience. “Anyone would think you were going to play 
yourself. And he will be as cool as an iceberg. The sofa 
won’t stand it, Heinz. If you can’t stop fidgeting, get up.” 

He had gone, before she finished speaking; for a slight stir 
in the next room made them suppose for a moment that Schil- 
sky was arriving. Afterwards, Krafft was to be seen straying 
about, with his hands in his pockets; and, on observing his rose- 
pink cheeks and tumbled curly hair, Madeleine could not re- 
frain from remarking: “ He ought to have been a girl.” 

The air was already hot, by reason of the lamps, and the many 
breaths, and the firmly shut double-windows. The clamour for 
beer had become universal by the time Adolfchen arrived with 
his arms full of bottles. As there were not enough glasses to 
go round, every two or three persons shared one between them 
— a proceeding that was carried out with much noisy mirth. 
Above all other voices was to be heard that of Miss Jensen, 
who, in a speckled yellow dress, with a large feather fan in 
her hand, sat in the middle of the front row of seats. It was 
she who directed how the beer should be apportioned; she ad- 
vised a few late-comers where they would still find room, and 
engaged Fiirst to place the lights on the piano to better ad- 
vantage. Next her, a Mrs. Lautenschlager, a plump little 
American lady, with straight yellow hair which hung down on 
her shoulders, was relating to her neighbour on the other side, 
in a tone that could be clearly heard in both rooms, how she 
had “ discovered ” her voice. 

“ I come to Schwarz, last fall,” she said shaking back her 


MAURICE GUEST 


173 


hair, and making effective use of her babyish mouth ; “ and he 
thinks no end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I 
lay in bed, I sung some — just for fun. And my landlady — 
she’s a regular singer herself — who was fixing up the room, she 
claps her hands together and says: ‘ My goodness me! Why 
you have a voice! ’ That’s what put it in my head, and I went 
to Sperling to hear what he’d got to say. He was just tickled 
to death, I guess he was, and he’s going to make something 
dandy of it, so I stop long enough. I don’t know what my 
husband’ll say though. When I wrote him I was sick, he says: 
‘ Come home and be sick at home ’ — that’s what he says.” 

Miss Jensen could not let pass the opportunity of breaking 
a lance for her own master, the Swede, and of cutting up 
Sperling’s method, which she denounced as antiquated. She 
made quite a little speech, in the course of which she now and 
then interrupted herself to remind Fiirst — who was as soft as a 
pudding before her — of something he had forgotten to do, such 
as snuffing the candles or closing the door. 

“ Just let me hear your scale, will you ? ” she said patronisingly 
to Mrs. Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out 
her chin, opened her mouth, and, for a short time, all other 
noises were drowned in a fine, full volume of voice. 

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurice sat in silence, pre- 
tending to listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. 
Madeleine was out of humour; she tapped the floor, and had 
a crease in her forehead. As for Maurice, he was in such poor 
spirits that she could not but observe it. 

“ Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter? ” 

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of 
impending misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; 
he knew now what it signified. If Schilsky went away from 
Leipzig, Louise would probably go, too, and that would be 
the end of everything. 

“ I represented to him,” he heard Dove saying, “ that I had 
seen the luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do 
you think he answered? He looked me up and down, and 
said: ‘ Ich werde telegraphieren und Erkundigungen einziehen. 
Now, do you think if you said to an English station-master: 

* Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,’ he would not 
believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway- 
system needs revision. Would you believe it, we did not make 
fifty kilometers in the hour, and yet our engine broke down 
before Magdeburg? ” 


174 


MAURICE GUEST 


So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and 
weak hopes, which he had never put into words even to him- 
self, which had never properly existed, and yet had been there, 
nevertheless, a mass of gloriously vague perhapses. The end 
was at hand — an end before there had been any beginning. 

“ . . . the annoyance of the perpetual interruptions,” went 
on the voice on the other side. “A lady who was travelling in 
the same compartment — a very pleasant person, who was com- 
ing over to be a teacher in a school in Dresden — I have prom- 
ised to show her our lions when she visits Leipzig : well, as I was 
saying, she was quite alarmed the first time he entered in 
that way, and it took me some time, I assure you, to 
make her believe that this was the German method of revising 
tickets.” 

The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been 
of short duration, and the audience was growing impatient; at 
the back of the room, some one began to stamp his feet; others 
took it up. Fiirst perspired with anxiety, and made repeated 
journeys to the stair-head, to see if Schilsky were not coming. 
The latter was almost an hour late by now, and jests, bald 
and witty, were made at his expense. Some one offered to take 
a bet that he had fallen asleep and forgotten the appointment, 
and at this, one of the girls on the bed, a handsome creature 
with bold, prominent eyes, related an anecdote to her neigh- 
bours, concerning Schilsky’s powers of sleep. All three ex- 
ploded with laughter. In a growing desire to be asked to play, 
Boehmer had for some time hung about the piano, and was 
now just about to drop, as if by accident, upon the stool, when 
the cry of: “ No Bach! ” was raised — Bach was Boehmer’s spe- 
cialty — and re-echoed, and he retired red and discomfited to his 
place in a corner of the room, where his companion, a statuesque 
little English widow, made biting observations on the company’s 
behaviour. The general rowdyism was at its height, when 
some one had the happy idea that Krafft should sing them his 
newest song. At this, there was a unanimous shriek of ap- 
proval, and several hands dragged Krafft to the piano. But 
himself the wildest of them all, he needed no forcing. Flinging 
himself down on the seat, he preluded wildly in imitation of 
Rubinstein. His hearers sat with their mouths open, a fixed 
smile on their faces, laughter ready in their throats, and only 
Madeleine was coolly contemptuous. 

“ Tom-fool! ” she said in a low voice. 

Krafft was confidently expected to burst into one of those 


MAURICE GUEST 


175 


songs for which he was renowned. Few of his friends were 
able to sing them, and no one but himself could both sing and 
play them simultaneously: they were a monstrous, standing 
joke. Instead of this, however, he turned, winked at his audi- 
ence, and began a slow, melancholy ditty, with a recurring re- 
frain. He was not allowed to finish the first verse; a howl 
of disapproval went up ; his hearers hooted, jeered and stamped. 

“ Sick cats! ” 

“ Damn your ' wenig Sonne! * ” — this was the refrain. 

“ Put your head in a bag ! ” 

“ Pity he drinks! ” 

“ Give us one of the rousers — the rou . . . sers ! ” 

Krafft himself laughed unbridledly. “Das ich spricht ! " he 
announced. “ In C sharp major.” 

There was a hush of anticipation, in which Dove, stopping 
his Bretzel half-way to his mouth, was heard to say in his tone 
of measured surprise: “ C sharp major! Why, that is ” 

The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that 
Krafft sent up and down the piano with his right hand, while 
his left followed with full-bodied chords, each of which exceeded 
the octave. Before, however, there was time to laugh, this 
riot ceased, and became a mournful cadence, to the slowly pass- 
ing harmonies of which, Krafft sang: 

I am weary of everything that is, under the sun. 

I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky; 
They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair: 

For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily. 

The whirlwind of the prelude commenced anew; the chords 
became still vaster; the player swayed from side to side, like 
a stripling-tree in a storm. Madeleine said, “Tch!” in dis- 
gust, but the rest of the company, who had only waited for 
this, burst into peals of laughter; some bent double in their 
seats, some leant back with their chins in the air. Even Dove 
smiled. Just, however, as those whose sense of humour was 
most highly developed, mopped their faces with gestures of 
exhaustion, and assured their neighbours that they “ could not, 
really could not laugh any more,” Fiirst entered and flapped his 
hands. 

“ Here he comes! ” 

A sudden silence fell, broken only by a few hysterical giggles 
from the ladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: “ Now 


MAURICE GUEST 


176 

for Also schrie Zenophobia! ” Krafft stopped playing, but re- 
mained sitting at the piano, wiping down the keys with his 
handkerchief. 

Schilsky came in, somewhat embarrassed by the lull which had 
succeeded the hubbub heard in the passage, but wholly uncon- 
cerned at the lateness of the hour: except in matters of prac- 
tical advancement, time did not exist for him. As soon as he 
appeared, the two ladies in the front row began to clap their 
hands; the rest of the company followed their example, then, 
in spite of Fiirst’s efforts to prevent it, rose and crowded round 
him. Miss Jensen and her friend made themselves particularly 
conspicuous. Mrs. Lautenschlager had an infatuation for the 
young man, of which she made no secret; she laid her hand 
caressingly on his coat-sleeve, and put her face as near his as 
propriety admitted. 

“ Disgusting, the way those women go on with him ! ” said 
Madeleine. “And what is worse, he likes it.” 

Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mix- 
ture of boyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which 
made him so attractive to women. He was too good-natured 
to interrupt them and free himself, and would have stood as 
long as they liked, if Fiirst had not come to the rescue and led 
him to the piano. Schilsky laid his hand affectionately on 
Krafft’s shoulder, and Krafft sprang up in exaggerated surprise. 
The audience took its seats again; the thick manuscript-score 
was set up on the music-rack, and the three young men at the 
piano had a brief disagreement with one another about turning 
the leaves: Krafft was bent on doing it, and Schilsky objected, 
for Krafft had a way of forgetting what he was at in the middle 
of a page. Krafft flushed, cast an angry look at his friend, and 
withdrew, in high dudgeon, to a corner. 

Standing beside the piano, so turned to those about him that 
the two on the sofa in the next room only saw him sideways, 
and ill at that, Schilsky gave a short description of his work. 
He was nervous, which aggravated his lisp, and he spoke so 
rapidly and in such a low voice that no one but those imme- 
diately in front of him, could understand what he said. But 
it did not matter in the least ; all present had come only to hear 
the music; they knew and cared nothing about Zarathustra and 
his spiritual development; and one and all waited impatiently 
for Schilsky to stop speaking. The listeners in the bedroom 
merely caught disjointed words — Werdegang, Notschrei, Tar- 
anteln — but not one was curious enough even to lean forward 


MAURICE GUEST 


177 

in his seat. Madeleine made sarcastic inward comments on the 
behaviour of the party. 

“ It’s perfectly clear to you, I suppose,” she could not re- 
frain from observing as, at the finish, Dove sagely wagged his 
head in agreement. 

It transpired that there was an ode to be sung before the last 
section of the composition, and a debate ensued who should 
sing it. The two ladies in the front had quite a little quarrel — 
without knowing anything about the song — as to which of 
their voices would best suit it. Schilsky was silent for a mo- 
ment, tapping his fingers, then said suddenly: “Come on, 
Heinz,” and looked at Krafft. But the latter, who was standing 
morose, with folded arms, did not move. He had a dozen rea- 
sons why he should not sing; he had a cold, was hoarse, was 
out of practice, could not read the music from sight. 

“ Good Heavens, what a fool Heinz is making of himself to- 
night! ” said Madeleine. 

But Schilsky thumped his fist on the lid, and said, if Krafft 
did not sing it, no one should; and that was the end of the 
matter. Krafft was pulled to the piano. 

Schilsky took his seat, and, losing his nervousness as soon 
as he touched the keys, preluded firmly and easily, with his 
large, white hands. Now, every one leaned forward to see him 
better; especially the ladies threw themselves into positions from 
which they could watch hair and hands, and the slender, sway- 
ing figure. 

“ Isn’t he divine?” said the bold-eyed girl on the bed, in a 
loud whisper, and hung upon her companion’s neck in an ec- 
static attitude. 

After the diversity of noises which had hitherto interfered 
with his thinking connectedly, Maurice welcomed the continu- 
ous sound of the music, which went on without a break. He 
sat in a listening attitude, shading his eyes with his hand. 
Through his fingers, he surreptitiously watched the player. He 
had never before had an opportunity of observing Schilsky so 
closely, and, with a kind of blatant generosity, he now pointed 
out to himself each physical detail that he found prepossessing 
in the other, every feature that was likely to attract — in the 
next breath, only to struggle with his honest opinion that the 
composer was a slippery, loose-jointed, caddish fellow, who 
could never be proved to be worthy of Louise. But he was 
too down-hearted at what he had learnt in the course of the 
evening, to rise to any active feeling of dislike. 


MAURICE GUEST 


178 

Intermittently he heard, in spite of himself, something of 
Schilsky’s music; but he was not in a frame of mind to under- 
stand or to retain any impression of it. He was more effec- 
tively jerked out of his preoccupation by single spoken words, 
which, from time to time, struck his ear: this was Fiirst, who, 
in the absence of a programme, announced from his seat be- 
side Schilsky, the headings of the different sections of the work: 
Werdegang; Seiltanzer — here Maurice saw Dove conducting 
with head and hand — Notschrei; Schwermut ; Taranteln — and 
here again, but vaguely, as if at a distance, he heard suppressed 
laughter. But he was thoroughly roused when Krafft, picking 
up a sheet of music and coming round to the front of the piano, 
began to sing Das trunkene Lied. By way of introduction, 
the low f in the bass of f minor sounded persistently, at syn- 
copated intervals; Schilsky inclined his head, and Krafft sang, 
in his sweet, flute-like voice: 

Oh, Mensch! Gieb Acht! 

Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? 

“ Ich schlief, ich schlief, 

Aus tiefem Schlaf bin ich erwacht: 

Die Welt ist tief, 

Und defer als der Tag gedacht. 

— the last phrase of which was repeated by the accompani- 
ment, a semitone higher. 

Tief ist ihr Weh, 

Lust — tiefer noch als Herzeleid: 

As far as this, the voice had been supported by simple, full- 
sounding harmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of f 
minor, rose a hesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: 
in imagination, one heard it given out by the bass strings; then 
the violas reiterated it, and dyed it purple; voice and violins 
sang it together; the high little flutes carried it up and beyond, 
out of reach, to a half close. 

Weh spricht: vergeh! 

Suddenly and unexpectedly, there entered a light yet mourn- 
ful phrase in F major, which was almost a dance-rhythm, and 
seemed to be a small, frail pleading for something not rightly 
understood. 


MAURICE GUEST 


179 


Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit, 

Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit. 

The innocent little theme passed away, and the words were 
sung again to a stern and fateful close in D flat major. 

The concluding section of the work returned to these mo- 
tives, developed them, gathered them together, grouped them 
and interchanged them, in complicated thermatic counterpoint. 
Schilsky was barely able to cope with the difficulties of 
the score; he exerted himself desperately, laboured with his 
head and his whole body, and surmounted sheerly unplayable 
parts with the genial slitheriness that is the privilege of com- 
posers. 

When, at last, he crashed to a close and wiped his face in 
exhaustion, there was a deafening uproar of applause. Loud 
cries were uttered and exclamations of enthusiasm ; people rose 
from their seats and crowded round the piano to congratulate 
the player. Mrs. Lautenschlager could not desist from kissing 
his hand. A tall, thin Russian girl in spectacles, who had 
assiduously taken notes throughout, asked in a loud voice, 
and her peculiar, hoppy German, for information about the 
orchestration. What use had he made of the cymbals? She 
trusted a purely Wagnerian one. Schilsky hastened to reopen 
the score, and sat himself to answer the question earnestly and 
at length. 

“ Come, Maurice, let us go,” said Madeleine, rising and 
shaking the creases from her skirt. “ There will be con- 
gratulations enough. He won’t miss ours.” 

Maurice had had an idea of lingering till everybody else 
had gone, on the chance of picking up fresh facts. But he 
was never good at excuses. So they slipped out into the pas- 
sage, followed by Dove; but while the latter was looking for 
his hat, Madeleine pulled Maurice down the stairs. 

“ Quick, let us go! ” she whispered; and, as they heard him 
coming after them, she drew her companion down still fur- 
ther, to the cellar flight, where they remained hidden until 
Dove had passed them, and his steps had died away in the 
street. 

“ We should have had nothing but his impressions and 
opinions all the way home,” she said, as they emerged. “ He 
was bottled up from having to keep quiet so long — I saw it in 
his face. And I couldn’t stand it to-night. I’m in a bad tem- 
per, as you may have observed — or perhaps you haven’t.” 

No, he had not noticed it. 


i8o 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Well, you would have, if you hadn’t been so taken up with 
yourself. What on earth is the matter with you? ” 

He feigned surprise: and they walked in silence down one 
street and into the next. Then she spoke again. “ Do you 
know — but you’re sure not to know that either — you gave 
me a nasty turn to-night ? ” 

“ I ? ” His surprise was genuine this time. 

“Yes, you — when I heard you say ‘ du * to Heinz.” 

He looked at her in astonishment; but she was not in a 
hurry to continue. They walked another street-length, and 
all she said was: “ How refreshing the air is after those stuffy 
rooms ! ” 

As they turned a corner, however, she made a fresh start. 

“ I think it’s rather hard on me,” she said, and laughed as 
she spoke. “ Here am I again, having to lecture you ! The 
fact is, I suppose, one’s metier clings to one, in spite of oneself. 
But there must be something about you, too, Maurice Guest, 
that makes one want to do it — want to look after you, so to 
speak — as if you couldn’t be trusted to take care of yourself. 
Well, it disturbed me to-nifdit. to see how intimate you and 
Heinz have got.” 

“ Is that all? Why on earth should that trouble you? And 
anyhow,” he added, “ the whole affair came about without 
any wish of mine.” 

“ How?” she demanded; ana when he had told her: “And 
since then ? ” 

He went into detail, coolly, without the resentment he had 
previously felt towards Krafft. 

“And that’s all?” 

“ Isn’t it enough — for a fellow to go on in that way? ” 

“ And you feel aggrieved ? ” 

“ No, not now. At first I was rather sore, though, for 
Heinz is an interesting fellow, and we were very thick for a 
time.” 

“Yes, of course — until Schilsky comes back. As soon as he 
appears on the scene, Master Heinz gives you the cold shoulder. 
Or perhaps you didn’t know that Heinz is the attendant spirit 
of that heaven-born genius ? ” 

Maurice did not reply, and when she spoke again, it was 
with renewed seriousness. “ Believe me, Maurice, he is no 
friend for you. It’s not only that you ought to be above letting 
yourself be treated in this way, but Heinz’s friendship won’t 
do you any good. He belongs to a bad set here — and Schilsky, 


MAURICE GUEST 


181 

too. If you were long with Heinz, you would be bound to get 
drawn into it, and then it would be good-bye to anything you 
might have done — to work and success. No, take my advice — 
it’s sincerely meant — and steer clear of Heinz.” 

Maurice smiled to himself at her womanly idea of Krafft 
leading him to perdition. “ But you’re fond of him yourself, 
Madeleine,” he said. “ You can’t help liking him either.” 

“ I daresay I can’t. But that is quite a different matter — 
quite;” and as if more than enough had now been said, she 
abruptly left the subject. 

Before going home that night, Maurice made the old round 
by way of the Briiderstrasse, and stood and looked up at the 
closed windows behind which Louise lived. The house was 
dark, and as still as was the deserted street. Only the Venetian 
blinds seemed to be faintly alive; the outer windows, removed 
for the summer, had not yet been replaced, and a mild wind 
flapped the blinds, just as it swayed the tops of the trees in 
the opposite garden. There was a breath of autumn in the air. 
He told himself aloud, in the nightly silence, that she was 
going away — as if by repeating the words, he might ultimately 
grow used to their meaning. The best that could be hoped 
for was that she would not go immediately, but would remain 
in Leipzig for a few weeks longer. Then a new fear beset 
him. What if she never came back again ? — if she had left the 
place quietly, of set purpose? — if these windows were closed 
for good and all? A dryness invaded his throat at the possi- 
bility, and on the top of this evening of almost apathetic 
resignation to the inevitable, the knowledge surged up in him 
that all he asked was to be allowed to see her just once more. 
Afterwards, let come what might. Once again, he must stand 
face to face with her — must stamp a picture of her on his 
brain, to carry with him for ever. 

For ever! And through his feverish sleep ran, like a 

thread, the words he had heard Krafft sing, of an eternity 
that was deep and dreamless, a joy without beginning or 
end. 

Madeleine had waved her umbrella at him. He crossed the 
road to where she was standing in rain-cloak and galoshes. 
She wished to tell him that the date of her playing in the 
Abendunterhaltung had been definitely fixed. About to go, 
she said: 

“ Louise is back — did you know? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


182 

Of course he knew, though he did not tell her so — knew al- 
most the exact hour at which the blinds had been drawn up, 
the windows opened, and a flower-pot, in a gaudy pink paper, 
put out on the sill. 

Not many days after this, he came upon Louise herself. She 
was standing talking, at a street-corner, to the shabby little 
Englishman, Eggis, with whom she had walked the foyer of 
the theatre. Maurice was about to bow and pass by, but she 
smiled and held out her hand. 

“You are back, too, then? To-day I am meeting all my 
friends.” 

She had fur about her neck, although the weather was not 
really cold, and her face rose out of this setting like a flower 
from its cup. 

This meeting, and the few cordial words she had spoken, 
helped him over the days that followed. Sometimes, while he 
waited for the blow to fall, his daily life grew very unim- 
portant; things that had hitherto interested him, now went 
past like shadows; he himself was a mere automaton. But 
sometimes, too, and especially after he had seen Louise, and 
touched her living hand, he wondered whether he were not 
perhaps tormenting himself unnecessarily. Nothing more had 
come to light; no one had hinted by a word at Schilsky’s de- 
parture ; it might yet prove to be all a mistake. 

Then, however, he received a postcard from Madeleine, 
saying that she had something interesting to tell him. He went 
too early, and spent a quarter of an hour pacing her room. 
When she entered, she threw him a look, and, before she had 
finished taking off her wraps, said : 

“ Maurice, I have a piece of news for you. Schilsky is 
going away.” 

He nodded; his throat was dry. 

“Why, you don’t mean to say you knew?” she cried, and 
paused half-way out of her jacket. 

Maurice went to the window, and stood with his back to her. 
In one of the houses opposite, at a window on the same level, 
a girl was practising the violin; his eyes followed the mechani- 
cal movements of the bow. 

He cleared his throat. “ Do you — Is it likely — - I mean, 
do you think? •” 

Madeleine understood him. “Yes, I do. Louise won’t 
stay here a day longer than he does; I’m sure of that.” 

But otherwise she knew no more than Maurice ; and she did 


MAURICE GUEST 


183 

not offer to detain him, when, a few minutes later, he alleged 
a pressing appointment. Madeleine was annoyed, and showed 
it; she had come in with the intention of being kind to him, of 
encouraging him, and discussing the matter sympathetically, and 
it now turned out that not only had he known it all the time, 
but had also kept it a secret from her. She did not like under- 
hand ways, especially in people whom she believed she knew 
inside out. 

Now that the pledge of secrecy had been removed from him, 
Maurice felt that he wanted facts; and, without thinking more 
about it than if he had been there the day before, he climbed the 
stairs that led to Krafift’s lodging. 

He found him at supper; Avery was present, too, and on the 
table sat Wotan, who was being regaled with strips of skin 
off the sausage. Krafft greeted Maurice with a touch of his 
former effusiveness ; for he was in a talkative mood, and needed 
an audience. At his order, Avery put an extra plate on the 
table, and Maurice had to share their meal. It was not hard 
for him to lead Krafft round to the desired subject. It seemed 
that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed 
a very unequivocal opinion of Schilsky’s talents as a com- 
poser, and Krafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic’s 
expense. Maurice laid down his knife, and, in the first break, 
asked abruptly: “When does he go?” 

“ Go ? — who ? ” said Krafft indifferently, tickling Wotan’s 
nose with a piece of skin which he held out of reach. 

“Who? — why, Schilsky, of course.” 

It sounded as if another than he had said the words: they 
were so short and harsh. The plate Avery was holding fell to 
the floor. Krafft sat back in his chair, and stared at Maurice, 
with a face that was all eyes. 

“You knew he was going away? — or didn’t you?” asked 
Maurice in a rough voice. “ Every one knows. The whole 
place knows.” 

Krafft laughed. “The whole place knows: every one 
knows,” he repeated. “ Every one, yes — every one but me. 
Every one but me, who had most right to know. Yes, I alone 
had the right ; for no one has loved him as I have.” 

He rose from the table, knocking over his chair. 

“ Or else it is not true? ” 

“Yes, it is true. Then you didn’t know?” said Maurice, 
bewildered by the outburst he had evoked. 

“ No, we didn’t know.” It was Avery who spoke. She 


1 84 MAURICE GUEST 

was on her knees, picking up the pieces of the plate with slow, 
methodical fingers. 

Krafft stood hesitating. Then he went to the piano, opened 
it, adjusted the seat, and made all preparations for playing. 
But with his fingers ready on the keys, he changed his mind 
and, instead, laid his arms on the folded rack and his head on 
his arms. He did not stir again, and a long silence followed. 
The only sound that was to be heard came from Wotan, who, 
sitting on his haunches on a corner of the table, washed the 
white fur of his belly with an audible swish. 


XIV 


Whistling to him to stop, Fiirst ran the length of a street- 
block after Maurice, as the latter left the Conservatorium. 

“ I say, Guest,” he said breathlessly, on catching up with 
him. “ Look here, I just wanted to tell you, you must be sure 
and join us to-night. We are going to give Schilsky a jolly 
send-off.” 

They stood at the corner of the Wachterstrasse ; it was a 
blowy day. Maurice replied evasively, with his eyes on the 
unbound volume of Beethoven that Fiirst was carrying; its 
tattered edges moved in the wind. 

“When does he go?” he asked, without any show of con- 
cern. 

Fiirst looked warily round him, and dropped his voice. 
“ Well, look here, Guest, I don’t mind telling you,” he said ; 
he was perspiring from his run, and dried his neck and face. 
“ I don’t mind telling you ; you won’t pass it on ; for he has his 
reasons — family or domestic reasons, if one may say so, tra- 
la-la! ” — he winked, and nudged Maurice with his elbow — 
“ for not wanting it to get about. It’s deuced hard on him 
that it should have leaked out at all. I don’t know how it 
happened ; for I was mum, ’pon my honour, I was.” 

“Yes. And when does he go?” repeated his hearer with 
the same want of interest. 

“ To-morrow morning early, by the first train.” 

Now to be rid of him! But it was never easy to get away 
from Fiirst, and since Maurice had declared his intention of 
continuing to take lessons from him, as good as impossible. 
Fiirst was overpowering in his friendliness, and on this par- 
ticular occasion, there was no escape for Maurice before he 
had promised to make one of the party that was to meet that 
night, at a restaurant in the town. Then he bluffly alleged an 
errand in the Plagwitzerstrasse , and went off in an opposite 
direction to that which his companion had to take. 

As soon as Fiirst was out of sight, he turned into the path 
that led to the woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous 
grey expanse, and a soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before 

185 


MAURICE GUEST 


which, on the open meadow-land, he bent his head. It was a 
wind that seemed heavy with unfallen rain; a melancholy 
wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in its faded colours, 
and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm, Maurice 
walked to the shelter of the trees. Now that he had learnt the 
worst, a kind of numbness came over him; he had felt so in- 
tensely in the course of the past week that, now the crisis was 
there, he seemed destitute of feeling. 

His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and 
here he remained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on 
the trodden gravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for 
all, that, by to-morrow, everything would be over; for, not- 
withstanding the wretchedness of the past days, he was as 
far off as ever from understanding. But he was loath to begin ; 
he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his 
eyes rested on: some children had built a make-believe house 
of pebbles, with a path leading up to the doorway, and at this 
he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas that had 
occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his hair, 
and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head. 
But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind be- 
gan to work again. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself 
as he had walked these very woods, seven months before; he 
remembered the brilliant colouring of the April day, and the 
abundance of energy that had possessed him. Then, on look- 
ing into the future, all his thoughts had been of strenuous en- 
deavour and success. Now, success was a word like any other, 
and left him cold. 

For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccu- 
pation, he considered this, brooding over the change that had 
come about in him. Was it, he asked himself, because he had 
so little whole-hearted endurance, that when once a thing was 
within his grasp, that grasp slackened? Was it that he was 
able to make the effort required for a leap, then, the leap over, 
could not right himself again? He believed that the slack- 
ening interest, the inability to fix his attention, which he had 
had to fight against of late, must have some such deeper sig- 
nificance; for his whole nature — the inherited common sense 
of generations — rebelled against tracing it back to the day on 
which he had seen a certain face for the first time. It was 
too absurd to be credible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl 
had suddenly come within his range of vision, his life should 
thus lose form and purpose — incredible and unnatural as well — 


MAURICE GUEST 187 

and, in his present mood, he would have laughed at the sug- 
gestion that this was love. To his mind, love was something 
frank and beautiful, made for daylight and the sun; whereas 
his condition was a source of mortification to him. To love, 
without any possible hope of return; to love, knowing that the 
person you loved regarded you with less than indifference, 
and, what was worse, that this person was passionately at- 
tached to another man — no, there was something indelicate 
about it, at which his blood revolted. It was the kind of thing 
that it suited poets to make tragedies of, but it did not — should 
not — happen in sober, daily life. And if, as it seemed in this 
case, it was beyond mortal’s power to prevent it, then the only 
fitting thing to do was promptly to make an end. And be- 
cause, over the approach of this end, he suffered, he now called 
himself hard names. What had he expected? Had he really 
believed that matters could always dally on, in this pleasant, 
torturous way? Would he always have been content to be 
third party, and miserable outsider? No; the best that could 
happen to him was now happening; let the coming day once 
be past, let a very few weeks have run their course, and the 
parting would have lost its sting; he would be able to look 
back, regretfully no doubt, but as on something done with, 
irrecoverable. Then he would apply himself to his work with 
all his heart; and it w^ould be possible to think of her, and 
remember her, calmly. If once an end were put to these daily 
chances of seeing her, which perpetually fanned his unrest, 
all would go well. 

And yet . . . did he close his eyes and let her face rise 
up before him — her sweet, white face, with the unfathom- 
able eyes, and pale, sensuous mouth — he was shaken by an 
emotion that knocked his resolutions as flat as a breath knocks 
a house of cards. It was not love, nor anything to do with 
love, this he could have sworn to: it was merely the strange 
physical effect her presence, or the remembrance of her pres- 
ence, had had upon him, from the first day on: a tightening 
of all centres, a heightening of all faculties, an intense hope, 
and as intense a despair. And in this moment, he confessed to 
himself that he would have been over-happy to live on just 
as he had been doing, if only sometimes he might see her. 
He needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; 
his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for 
light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her — her 
only — and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was 


1 88 


MAURICE GUEST 


a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading 
that another person should be able to exercise such an influence 
over him, that there should be a part of himself over which 
he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather 
fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip 
life had of him would relax — he grew sick even at the thought 
of how, in some unknown place, in the midst of strangers, she 
would go on living, and giving her hand and her smile to other 
people, while he would never see her again. And he said her 
name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if 
the sound of it might somehow bring him aid : he inwardly 
implored whatever fate was above him to give him the one 
small chance he asked — the chance of fair play. 

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, con- 
siderably after his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, 
he looked at familiar objects with unseeing eyes. He was 
not conscious of hunger, but going into the kitchen begged 
for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt brewing on Frau 
Krause’s stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed to lift 
from his brain ; he opened and read a letter from home, and was 
pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few 
scales run hastily that morning, he had done no work. But 
while he still stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an 
exclamation rose to his lips; and taking up his hat, he went 
down the stairs again, and out into the street. What was he 
thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more, his place 
was under her windows, or in those streets she would be likely 
to pass through. 

He walked up and down before the house in the Briider- 
strasse , sometimes including a side street, in order to avoid 
making himself conspicuous; putting on a hurried air, if any- 
one looked curiously at him ; lingering for a quarter of an hour 
on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring doorway. Gradually, 
yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a close. He had 
paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her had 
he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness 
fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset 
him again, and got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes 
flitted through his mind. He would mount the stairs, and ring 
the door-bell, on some pretext or other, to learn whether she 
was still there; and his foot was on the lowest stair, when 
his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the idea had 
taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he 


MAURICE GUEST 189 

was in; and so, towards seven o’clock, when he had hung about 
for three hours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, 
he went boldly up the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. 
When the door was opened, he would find something to say. 

The bell, which he had pulled hard, pealed through the 
house, jangled on, and, in a series of after-tinkles, died away. 
There was no immediate answering sound ; the silence persisted, 
and having waited for some time, he rang again. Then, in 
the distance, he heard a door creak; soft, cautious footsteps 
crept along the passage; a light moved; the glass window in 
the upper half of the door was opened, and a little old woman 
peered out, holding a candle above her head. On seeing the 
pale face close before her, she drew back, and made as if to 
shut the window; for, as a result of poring over newspapers, 
she lived in continual expectation of robbery and murder. 

“ She is not at home,” she said with tremulous bravado, in 
answer to the young man’s question, and again was about to 
close the window. But Maurice thrust in his hand, and she 
could not shut without crushing it. 

“ Then she is still here? Has she gone out? When will she 
be back?” he queried. 

“ How should I know? And look here, young man, if you 
don’t take away your hand and leave the house at once, I shall 
call from the window for a policeman.” 

He went slowly down the stairs and across the street, and 
:00k up anew his position in the dark doorway — a proceeding 
vhich did not reassure Fraulein Griinhut, who, regarding his 
nquiries as a feint, was watching his movements from between 
; he slats of a window-blind. But Maurice had not stood again 
j or more than a quarter of an hour, when a feeling of nausea 
Seized him, and this reminded him that he had practically eaten 
nothing since the morning. If he meant to hold out, he must 
natch a bite of food somewhere; afterwards, he would return 
nd wait, if he had to wait all night. 

; In front of the Panorama on the Rossplatz , he ran into the 
rms of Fiirst, and the latter, when he heard where Maurice 
i^as going, had nothing better to do than to accompany him, 
!nd drink a Schnitt. Fiirst, who was in capital spirits at the 
Irospect of the evening, laughed heartily, told witty anecdotes, 

| id slapped his fat thigh, the type of rubicund good-humour; 
;iid as he was not of an observant turn of mind, he did not 
1 otice his companion’s abstraction. Hardly troubling to dis- 
mble, Maurice paid scant attention to Fiirst’s talk; he ate 


1 88 


MAURICE GUEST 


a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading 
that another person should be able to exercise such an influence 
over him, that there should be a part of himself over which 
he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather 
fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip 
life had of him would relax — he grew sick even at the thought 
of how, in some unknown place, in the midst of strangers, she 
would go on living, and giving her hand and her smile to other 
people, while he would never see her again. And he said her 
name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if 
the sound of it might somehow bring him aid; he inwardly 
implored whatever fate was above him to give him the one 
small chance he asked — the chance of fair play. 

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, con- 
siderably after his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, 
he looked at familiar objects with unseeing eyes. He was 
not conscious of hunger, but going into the kitchen begged 
for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt brewing on Frau 
Krause’s stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed to lift 
from his brain ; he opened and read a letter from home, and was 
pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few 
scales run hastily that morning, he had done no work. But 
while he still stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an 
exclamation rose to his lips; and taking up his hat, he went 
down the stairs again, and out into the street. What was he 
thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more, his place 
was under her windows, or in those streets she would be likely 
to pass through. 

He walked up and down before the house in the Bruder- 
strasse , sometimes including a side street, in order to avoid 
making himself conspicuous; putting on a hurried air, if any- 
one looked curiously at him ; lingering for a quarter of an hour 
on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring doorway. Gradually, 
yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a close. He had 
paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her had 
he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness 
fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset 
him again, and got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes 
flitted through his mind. He would mount the stairs, and ring 
the door-bell, on some pretext or other, to learn whether she 
was still there; and his foot was on the lowest stair, when 
his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the idea had 
taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he 


L, ■ . • - •. 

MAURICE GUEST 

was in ; and so, towards seven o’clock, when he had hung about 
for three hours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, 
he went boldly up the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. 
When the door was opened, he would find something to say. 

The bell, which he had pulled hard, pealed through the 
house, jangled on, and, in a series of after-tinkles, died away. 
There was no immediate answering sound ; the silence persisted, 
and having waited for some time, he rang again. Then, in 
the distance, he heard a door creak; soft, cautious footsteps 
crept along the passage ; a light moved ; the glass window in 
the upper half of the door was opened, and a little old woman 
peered out, holding a candle above her head. On seeing the 
pale face close before her, she drew back, and made as if to 
shut the window ; for, as a result of poring over newspapers, 
she lived in continual expectation of robber} 7 and murder. 

“ She is not at home,” she said with tremulous bravado, in 
answer to the young man’s question, and again was about to 
close the window. But Maurice thrust in his hand, and she 
could not shut without crushing it. 

“ Then she is still here? Has she gone out? When will she 
be back ? ” he queried. 

“ How should I know? And look here, young man, if you 
don’t take away your hand and leave the house at once, I shall 
call from the window for a policeman.” 

He went slowly down the stairs and across the street, and 
took up anew his position in the dark doorway — a proceeding 
which did not reassure Fraulein Griinhut, who, regarding his 
inquiries as a feint, was watching his movements from between 
the slats of a w T indow-blind. But Maurice had not stood again 
for more than a quarter of an hour, when a feeling of nausea 
seized him, and this reminded him that he had practically eaten 
I nothing since the morning. If he meant to hold out, he must 
snatch a bite of food somewhere; afterwards, he would return 
and wait, if he had to wait all night. 

In front of the Panorama on the Rossplatz , he ran into the 
arms of Fiirst, and the latter, when he heard where Maurice 
was going, had nothing better to do than to accompany him, 
and drink a Schnitt. Fiirst, who was in capital spirits at the 
prospect of the evening, laughed heartily, told witty anecdotes, 
and slapped his fat thigh, the type of rubicund good-humour; 
and as he was not of an observant turn of mind, he did not 
notice his companion’s abstraction. Hardly troubling to dis- 
semble, Maurice paid scant attention to Fiirst ’s talk; he ate 



190 MAURICE GUEST 

avidly, and as soon as he had finished, pushed back his chair 
and called to the waiter for his bill. 

“ I must go,” he said, and rose. “ I have something im- 
portant to do this evening, and can’t join you.” 

Fiirst, cut short in the middle of a sentence, let his double 
chin fall on his collar, and gazed open-mouthed at his com- 
panion. 

“But I say, Guest, look here! . . .” Maurice heard him 
expostulate as the outer door slammed behind him. 

He made haste to retrace his steps. The wind .had dropped ; 
a fine rain was beginning to fall ; it promised to be a wet night, 
of empty streets and glistening pavements. There was no vis- 
ible change in the windows of the Briiderstrasse; they were as 
blankly dark as before. Turning up his coat-collar, Maurice 
resumed his patrollings, but more languidly; he was drowsy 
from having eaten, and the air was chill. A weakness over- 
came him at the thought of the night-watch he had set himself ; 
it seemed impossible to endure the crawling past of still more 
hours. He was tired to exhaustion, and a sudden, strong de- 
sire arose in him, somehow, anyhow, to be taken out of himself, 
to have his thoughts diverted into other channels. And this 
feeling grew upon him with such force, the idea of remaining 
where he was, for another hour, became so intolerable, that he 
forgot everything else, and turned and ran back towards the 
Panoramaj only afraid lest Fiirst should have gone without 
him. 

The latter was, in fact, just coming out of the door. He 
stared in astonishment at Maurice. 

“ I’ve changed my mind,” said Maurice, without apology. 
“Shall we go? Where’s the place?” 

Fiirst mumbled something inaudible; he was grumpy at the 
other’s behaviour. Scanning him furtively, and noting his 
odd, excited manner, he concluded that Maurice had been 
drinking. 

They walked without speaking; Fiirst hummed to himself. 
In the thick-sown, business thoroughfare, the Briihl, they en- 
tered a dingy cafe; and while Fiirst chattered with the landlord 
and Biiffetdame, with both of whom he was on very friendly 
terms, Maurice went into the side-room, where the Kneipe 
was to be held, and sat down before a long, narrow table, 
spread with a soiled red and blue-checked tablecloth. He felt 
cold and sick again, and when the wan piccolo set a beer-mat 
before him, he sent the lad to the devil for a cognac. The 


MAURICE GUEST 


191 

waiter came with the liqueur-bottle; Maurice drank the con- 
tents of one and then another of the tiny glasses. A genial 
warmth ran through him and his nausea ceased. He leaned 
his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and, soothed by the heat 
of the room, had a few moments’ pleasant lapse of conscious- 
ness. 

He was roused by the entrance of a noisy party of three. 
These were strangers to him, and when they had mentioned 
their names and learned his, they sat down at the other end of 
the table and talked among themselves. They were followed 
by a couple of men known to Maurice by sight. One, an 
Italian, a stout, animated man, with prominent jet-black eyes 
and huge white teeth, was a fellow-pupil of Schilsky’s, and a 
violinist of repute, notwithstanding the size and fleshiness of 
his hands, which were out of all proportion to the delicate build 
of his instrument. The other was a slender youth of fantastic 
appearance. He wore a long, old-fashioned overcoat, which 
reached to his heels, and was moulded to a shapely waist; on 
his fingers were numerous rings; his bushy hair was scented 
and thickly curled, his face painted and pencilled like a wo- 
man’s. He did not sit down, but, returning to the public 
room, leaned over the counter and talked to the Buffetdame, 
in a tone which had nothing in common with Fiirst’s hearty 
familiarity. 

Next came a couple of Americans, loud, self-assertive, care- 
less of dress and convention; close behind them still another 
group, and at its heels, Dove. The latter entered the room 
with an apologetic air, and on sitting down at the head of the 
table, next Maurice, mentioned at once that, at heart, he was 
not partial to this kind of thing, and was only there because 
he believed the present to be an exceptional occasion : who knew 
but what, in after years, he might not be proud to claim 
having made one of the party on this particular evening? — 
the plain truth being that Schilsky was little popular with his 
own sex, and, in consequence of the difficulty of beating up a 
round dozen of men, Fiirst had been forced to be very pressing 
in his invitations, to have recourse to bribes and promises, or, 
as in the case of Dove, to stimulating the imagination. The 
majority of the guests present were not particular who paid for 
their drink, provided they got it. 

I At Kraffit’s entry, a stifled laugh went round. To judge 
from his appearance, he had not been in bed the previous night: 
sleep seemed to hang on his red and sunken eyelids; his hands 


192 


MAURICE GUEST 


and face were dirty, and when he took off his coat, which he 
had worn turned up at the neck, it was seen that he had either 
lost or forgotten his collar. Shirt and waistcoat were insuffi- 
ciently buttoned. His walk was steady, but his eyes had a 
glassy stare, and did not seem to see what they rested on. A 
strong odour of brandy went out from him; but he had not 
been many minutes in the room before a stronger and more 
penetrating smell made itself felt. The rest of the company 
began to sniff and ejaculate, and Fiirst, having tracked it to 
the corner where the overcoats hung, drew out of one of 
Krafft’s pockets a greasy newspaper parcel, evidently some 
days old, containing bones, scraps of decaying meat, and rancid 
fish. The piccolo , summoned by a general shout, was bade 
to dispose of the garbage instantly, and to hang the coat in a 
draughty place to air. Various epithets were hurled at Krafft, 
who, however, sat picking his teeth with unconcern, as if what 
went on around him had nothing to do with him. 

They were now all collected but Schilsky, and much beer 
had been drunk. Fiirst was in his usual state of agitation lest 
his friend should forget to keep the appointment ; and the 
spirits of those — there were several such present — who suf- 
fered almost physical pain from seeing another than themselves 
the centre of interest, went up by leaps and bounds. But at 
this, juncture, Schilsky’s voice was heard in the next room. It 
was raised and angry; it snarled at a waiter. Significant 
glances flew round the table: for the young man’s outbursts of 
temper were well known to all. He entered, making no response 
to the greetings that were offered him, displaying his anger 
with genial indifference to what others thought of him. To 
the piccolo he tossed coat and hat, and swore at the boy for 
not catching them. Then he let his loose-limbed body down 
on the vacant chair, and drank off the glass of Pilsener that 
was set before him. 

There was a pause of embarrassment. The next moment, 
however, several men spoke at once: Fiirst continued a story 
he was telling, some one else capped it, and the mirth these 
anecdotes provoked was more than ordinarily uproarious. Schil- 
sky sat silent, letting his sullen mouth hang, and tapping the 
table with his fingers. Meanwhile, he emptied one glass of 
beer after another. The piccolo could hardly cope with the 
demands that were made on him, and staggered about, top- 
heavy, with his load of glasses. 

But it was impossible to let the evening pass as flatly as 


MAURICE GUEST 


193 


this; besides, as the general hilarity increased, it made those 
present less sensitive to the mood of the guest of honour. Fiirst 
was a born speaker, and his heart was full. So, presently, 
he rose to his feet, struck his glass, and, in spite of Schilsky’s 
deepening scowl, held a flowery speech about his departing 
friend. The only answer Schilsky gave was a muttered request 
to cease making an idiot of himself. 

This was going rather too far; but no one protested, ex- 
cept Ford, the pianist, who said in English: “ Speesch? Call 
that a speesch ? ” 

Fiirst, inclined in the first moment of rebuff to be touchy, 
allowed his natural goodness of heart to prevail. He leaned 
forward, and said, not without pathos: “Old man, we are all 
your friends here. Something’s the matter. Tell us what it is.” 

Before Schilsky could reply, Krafft awakened from his ap- 
parent stupor to say with extreme distinctness: “ I’ll tell you. 
There’s been the devil to pay.” 

“Now, chuck it, Krafft!” cried one or two, not without 
alarm at the turn things might take. 

But Schilsky, whose anger had begun to subside under the 
influence of the two litres he had drunk, said slowly and 
thickly: “Let him be. What he says is the truth — gospel 
truth.” 

“ Oh, say, that’s to’ bad ! ” cried one of the Americans — a 
lean man, with the mouth and chin of a Methodist. 

All kept silence now, in the hope that Schilsky would con- 
tinue. As he did not, but sat brooding, Fiirst, in his role 
of peacemaker, clapped him on the back. “ Well, forget it 
for to-night, old man! What does it matter? To-morrow you’ll 
be miles away.” 

This struck a reminiscence in Ford, who forthwith tried to 
sing: 

I’m off by the morning train, 

Across the raging main 

“ That’s easily said ! ” Schilsky threw a dark look round the 
table. “ By those who haven’t been through it. I have. And 
I’d rather have lost a hand.” 

Krafft laughed — that is to say, a cackle of laughter issued 
from his mouth, while his glazed eyes stared idiotically. “ He 
shall tell us about it. Waiter, a round of Schnaps!” 

“ Shut up, Krafft! ” said Fiirst uneasily. 

“ Damn you, Heinz ! ” cried Schilsky, striking the table. 


194 


MAURICE GUEST 


He swallowed his brandy at a gulp, and held out the glass to 
be refilled. His anger fell still more; he began to commiserate 
himself. “ By Hell, I wish a plague would sweep every 
woman off the earth ! ” 

“ The deuce, why don’t you keep clear of them ? ” 

Schilsky laughed, without raising his heavy eyes. “ If 
they’d only give one the chance. Damn them all! — old and 
young — I say. If it weren’t for them, a man could lead a 
quiet life.” 

“ It’ll all come out in the wash,” consoled the American. 

Maurice heard everything that passed, distinctly ; but the 
words seemed to be bandied at an immeasurable distance from 
him. He remained quite undisturbed, and would have felt like 
a god looking on at the doings of an infinitesimal world, had it 
not been for a wheel which revolved in his head, and hindered 
him from thinking connectedly. So far, drinking had brought 
him no .pleasure ; and he had sense enough to find the proximity 
of Ford disagreeable; for the latter spilt half the liquor he tried 
to swallow over himself, and half over his neighbour. 

A fresh imprecation of Schilsky’s called forth more laugh- 
ter. On its subsidence, Krafft awoke to his surroundings 
again. “ What has the old woman given you? ” he asked, with 
his strange precision of speech and his drunken eyes. 

Schilsky struck the table with his fist. “ Look at him ! — 
shamming drunk, the bitch ! ” he cried. 

“Never mind him; he don’t count. How much did she 
give you ? ” 

“ Oh, gee, go on ! ” 

But Schilsky, turned sullen again, refused to answer. 

“ Out with it then, Krafft ! — you know, you scoundrel, 
you ! ” 

Krafft put his hand to the side of his mouth. “ She gave 
him three thousand marks.” 

On all sides the exclamations flew. 

“ Oh, gee-henna! ” 

“Golly for her!” 

“ Drei tausend Mark! — Alle Ehre !” 

Again Krafft leaned forward with a maudlin laugh. 
“ Jaivohl — but on what condition?” 

“ Heinz, you ferret out things like a pig’s snout,” said Fiirst. 
with an exaggerated, tipsy disgust. 

“What, the old louse made conditions, did she?” 

“ Is she jealous? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 195 

There was another roar at this. Schilsky looked as black 
as thunder. 

Again Fiirst strove to intercede. “Jealous? — in seven devils’ 
name, why jealous? The old scarecrow! She hasn’t an ounce 
of flesh to her bones.” 

Schilsky laughed. “Much you know about it, you fool! 
Flesh or no flesh, she’s as troublesome as the plumpest. I 
wouldn’t go through the last month again for all you could 
offer me. Month? — no, nor the last six months either! It’s 
been a hell of a life. Three of ’em, whole damned three, at 
my heels, and each ready to tear the others’ eyes out.” 

“Three! Hullo!” 

“Three? Bah! — what’s three?” sneered the painted youth. 

Schilsky turned on him. “What’s three? Go and try.it, 
if you want to know, you pap-sodden suckling! Three, I 
said, and they’ve ended by making the place too hot to hold 
me. But I’m done now. No more for me! — if my name’s 
what it is.” 

Having once broken through his reserve, he talked on, with 
heated fluency; and the longer he spoke, the more he was car- 
ried away by his grievances. For, all he had asked for, he 
assured his hearers, had been peace and quiet — the peace neces- 
sary to important work. “ Jesus and Mary ! Are a fellow’s 
chief obligations not his obligations to himself?” At the same 
time, it was not his intention to put any of the blame on Lulu’s 
shoulders: she couldn’t help herself. “Lulu is Lulu. I’m 
damned fond of Lulu, boys, and I’ve always done my best 
by her — is there anyone here who wants to say I haven’t ? ” 

There was none ; a chorus of sympathetic ayes went up from 
the party that was drinking at his expense. 

Mollified, he proceeded, asserting vehemently that he would 
have gone miles out of his way to avoid causing Lulu pain. 
“I’m a soft-hearted fool — I admit it! — where a woman is 
concerned.” But he had yielded to her often enough — too 
often — as it was; the time had come for him to make a 
stand. Let those present remember what he had sacrificed 
only that summer for Lulu’s sake. Would anyone else have 
done as much for his girl? He made bold to doubt it. For 
a man like Zeppelin to come to him, and to declare, with tears 
in his eyes, that he could teach him no more — could he afford 
to treat a matter like that with indifference? Had he really 
been free to make a choice? 

Again he looked round the table with emphasis, and those 


MAURICE GUEST 


196 

who had their muscles sufficiently under control, hastened to 
lay their faces in seemly folds. 

Then, however, Schilsky ’s mood changed ; he struck the 
table so that the glasses danced. “ And shall I tell you what 
my reward has been for not going? Do you want to know 
how Lulu has treated me for staying on here? ‘You are a 
quarter of an hour late: where have you been? You’ve only 
written two bars since I saw you this morning: what have 
you been doing? A letter has come in a strange writing: 
who is it from? You’ve put on another tie: who have 
you been to see?’ Himmelsakrament! ” He drained his 
glass. “ I’ve had the life of a dog, I tell you — of a dog! 
There’s not been a moment in the day when she hasn’t spied 
on me, and followed me, and made me ridiculous. Over every 
trifle she has got up a fresh scene. She’s even gone so far as 
to come to my room and search my pockets, when she knew I 
wasn’t at home.” 

“Yes, yes,” sneered Krafft. “ Exactly! And so, gentlemen, 
he was now for slinking off without a word to her.” 

“ Oh, pfui! " spat the American. 

“ Call him a liar! ” said a voice. 

“Liar?” repeated Schilsky dramatically. “Why liar? I 
don’t deny it. I would have done it gladly if I could — isn’t 
that just what I’ve been saying? Lulu would have got over 
it all the quicker alone. And then, why shouldn’t I confess 
it? You’re all my friends here.” He dropped his voice. 
“ I’m afraid of Lulu, boys. I was afraid she’d get round me, 
and then my chance was gone. She might have shot me, but 
she wouldn’t have let me go. You never know how a woman 
of that type’ll break out — never! ” 

“ But she didn’t! ” said Krafft. “ You live.” 

Schilsky understood him. 

“ Some brute,” he cried savagely, “ some dirty brute had 
nothing better to do than to tell her.” 

“ Ha, ha, ha! ” laughed the painted boy. 

Fiirst blew his nose. “ It wasn’t me. I was mum. ’Pon 
my honour, I was.” 

“ My God ! ” said Schilsky, and fell to remembering it. 
“What a time I’ve been through with her this afternoon!” 
He threatened to be overcome by the recollection, and sup- 
ported his head on his hands. “ A woman has no gratitude,” 
he murmured, and drew his handkerchief from his pocket. “ It 
is a weak, childish sex — with no inkling of higher things.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


197 


Here, however, he suddenly drew himself up. “ Life is very 
hard ! ” he cried, in a loud voice. “ The perpetual struggle 
between duty and inclination for a man of genius . . . . ! ” 

He grew franker, and gave gratuitous details of the scene 
that had taken place in his room that afternoon. Most of those 
present were in ecstasies at this divulging of his private life, 
which went forward to the accompaniment of snores from 
Ford, and the voice of Dove, who, with portentous gravity, 
sang over and over again, the first strophe of The Last Rose 
of Summer . 

“A fury!” said Schilsky. “A ... a what do you call 

it? — a . . . Meg ... a Meg ” He gave it up and 

went on: “By God, but Lulu knows how! Keep clear of 
her nails, boys — I’d advise you!” At this point, he pulled 
back his collar, and exhibited a long, dark scratch on the side 
of his neck. “ A little remembrance she gave me to take 
away with me ! ” While he displayed it, he seemed to be 
rather proud of it ; but immediately afterwards, his mood 
veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate 
the injustice she had been guilty of, and his own long-suffer- 
ing, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation with Ephie, 
and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise in igno- 
rance of what was happening. He grew very tender with him- 
self as he told it. For, according to him, the whole affair had 
come about without any assistance of his. “ What the deuce 
was I to do? Chucked herself full at my head, did the little 
one. No invitation necessary — a ripe plum, boys! Touch the 
plum — and off it tumbles! As pretty a little thing, too, as 
ever was made! Had everything arranged by the second meet- 
ing. Papa to set us up; house in New York; money in Hiille 
und Fiille! ” 

At the mention of New York, the lean American looked 
grave. “ Look here, you, don’t think you’re the whole shoot 
because you’ve got a wave in your hair!” he murmured in 
English. 

But Schilsky did not hear him; his voice droned on, giving 
the full particulars of this particular case. He grew momen- 
tarily opener. 

“ One no sooner out of the door than the other was in,” he 
asserted, and laughed long to himself. 

For some time past, Maurice had been possessed by the 
idea that what was happening concerned him very nearly, and 
that he ought to interfere and put his foot down. His hands 


MAURICE GUEST 


198 

had grown cold, and he sat vainly trying to speak: nothing, 
however, came, but little drunken gulps and hiccups. But the 
first mention of Ephie’s name seemed to put new strength into 
him; he made a violent effort, and rose to his feet, holding on 
to the table with both hands. He could not, however, manage 
to attract attention; no one took any notice of him; and be- 
sides this, he had himself no notion what it was that he really 
wanted to say. 

“ And drowns his sorrows in the convivial glass ! ” he sud- 
denly shouted in English, at the top of his voice, which he had 
found. He had a vague belief that he was quoting a well- 
known line of poetry, and, though he did not in the least un- 
derstand how it applied to the situation, he continued to re- 
peat it, with varying shades of fervour, till some one called 
out: “ Oh, stop your blasted rot! ” 

He laughed hoarsely at this, could not check himself, and was 
so exhausted when he had finished that it took him some time 
to remember why he was on his feet. Schilsky was still re- 
lating: his face was darkly red, his voice husky, and he flapped 
his arms with meaningless gestures. A passionate rebellion, 
a kind of primitive hatred, gripped Maurice, and when Schil- 
sky paused for breath, he could contain himself no longer. 
He felt the burning need of contradicting the speaker, even 
though he could not catch the drift of what was said. 

“ It’s a lie!” he cried fiercely, with such emphasis that 
every face was turned to him. “ A damned lie ! ” 

“A lie? What the devil do you mean?” responded not 
one but many voices — the whole table seemed to be asking 
him, with the exception of Dove, who sang on in an ever 
decreasing tempo. 

“ Get out! — Let him alone; he’s drunk. He doesn’t know 
what he’s saying — He’s got rats in his head ! ” he heard voices 
asserting. Forthwith he began a lengthy defence of himself, 
broken only by gaps in which his brain refused to work. Con- 
scious that no one was listening to him, he bawled more and 
more loudly. 

“ Oh, quit it, you double-barrelled ass! ” said the American. 

Schilsky, persuaded by those next him to let the incident pass 
unnoticed, contented himself with a: " V erfluchte Schweinerei! " 
spat, after Fiirst’s gurgled account of Maurice’s previous in- 
sobriety, across the floor behind him, to express his contempt, 
and proceeded as dominatingly as before with the narration of 
his love-affairs. 


MAURICE GUEST 


199 


The blood rushed to Maurice’s head at the sound of this 
voice which he could neither curb nor understand. Rage mas- 
tered him — a vehement desire to be quits. He kicked back his 
chair, and rocjced to and fro. 

“It’s a lie — a dirty lie!” he cried. “You make her un- 
happy — God, how unhappy you make her! You illtreat her. 
You’ve never given her a day’s happiness. S . . . said so . . . 
herself. I heard her ... I swear . . . I ” 

His voice turned to a whine; his words came thick and in- 
coherent. 

Schilsky sprang to his feet and aimed the contents of a 
half-emptied glass at Maurice’s face. “ Take that, you 
blasted spy! — you Englishman!” he spluttered. “I’ll teach 
you to mix your dirty self in my affairs ! ” 

Every one jumped up; there was noise and confusion; simul- 
taneously two waiters entered the room, as if they had not been 
unprepared for something of this kind. Fiirst and another man 
restrained Schilsky by the arms, reasoning with him with more 
force than coherence. Maurice, the beer dripping from chin, 
collar and shirt-front, struggled furiously with some one who 
held him back. 

“ Let me get at him — let me get at him! ” he cried. “ I’ll 
teach him to treat a woman as he does. The sneak — the cur 
— the filthy cad! He’s not fit to touch her hand — her beau- 
tiful hand — her beau . . . ti . . . ful ” Here, overpowered 

by his feelings, as much as by superior strength, he sank on a 
chair and wept. 

“I’ll break his bones!” raved Schilsky. “What the hell 
does he mean by it? — the infame Schuft , the Aas , the dirty 
Englander! Thinks he’ll sneak after her himself, does he? — 
What in Jesus’ name is it to him how I treat her? I’ll take 
a stick to her if I like — it’s none of his blasted business! Look 
here, do you see that?” He freed one hand, fumbled in his 
pocket, and, almost inarticulate w T ith rage and liquor, bran- 
dished a key across the table. “Do you see that? That’s a 
key, isn’t it, you drunken hog? Well, with that key, I can let 
myself into Lulu’s room at any hour I want to; I can go there 
now, this very minute, if I like — do you think she’ll turn me 
out, you infernal spy? Turn me out? — she’d go down on her 
knees here before you all to get me back to her! ” 

Unwilling to be involved in the brawl, the more sober of 
the party had begun to seek out their hats and to slink away. 
A little group round Schilsky blarneyed and expostulated. 


200 


MAURICE GUEST 


Why should the whole sport of the evening be spoilt in this 
fashion ? What did it matter what the damned cranky English- 
man said? Let him be left to his swilling. They would clear 
out, and wind up the night at the Bauer; and at four, when that 
shut, they would go on to the Bay rise he Bahnhof , where they 
could not only get coffee, but could also see Schilsky off by a 
train soon after five. These persuasions prevailed, and, still 
swearing, and threatening, and promising, by all that was holy, 
to bring Lulu there, by the hair of her head if necessary, to show 
whether or no he had the power over her he boasted of, Schilsky 
finally allowed himself to be dragged off, and those who were 
left lurched out in his wake. 

With their exit an abrupt silence fell, and Maurice sank 
into a heavy sleep, in which he saw flowery meadows and heard 
a gently trickling brook. . . . 

“Now then, up with you! — get along!” some one was 
shouting in his ear, and, bit by bit, a pasty-faced waiter entered 
his field of view. “ It’s past time, anyhow,” and yawning 
loudly, the waiter turned out all the gas-jets but one. “ Don’t 
yer hear? Up with you! You’ll have to look after the other — 
now, damn me, if there isn’t another of you as well! ” and, 
from under the table, he drew out a recumbent body. 

Maurice then saw that he was still in the company of Dove, 
who sat staring into space — like a dead man. Krafft, propped 
on a chair, hung his head far back, and the collarless shirt ex- 
posed the whole of his white throat. 

The waiter hustled them about. Maurice was comparatively 
steady on his legs; and it was found that Dove could walk. 
But over Krafft, the man scratched his head and called a com- 
rade. At the mention of a droschke, however, Maurice all 
but wept anew with ire and emotion: this was his dearest 
friend, the friend of his bosom; he was ready at any time to 
stake his life for him, and now he was not to be allowed even 
to see him home. 

A difficulty arose about Maurice’s hat: he was convinced 
that the one the waiter jammed so rudely on his head did not 
belong to him; and it seemed as if nothing in the world had 
ever mattered so much to him as now getting back his own 
hat. But he had not sufficient fluency to explain all he meant ; 
before he had finished, the man lost patience; and suddenly, 
without any transition, the three of them were in the street. 
The raw night air gave them a shock; they gasped and choked 
a little. Then the wall of a house rose appositely and met 


MAURICE GUEST 201 

them. They leaned against it, and Maurice threw the hat 
from him and trampled on it, chuckling at the idea that he was 
revenging himself on the waiter. 

It was a journey of difficulties; not only was he unclear 
what locality they were in, but innumerable lifeless things 
confronted them and formed obstacles to their progress; they 
had to charge an advertisement-column two or three times be- 
fore they could get round it. Maurice grew excessively angry, 
especially with Dove. For while Heinz let himself be lugged 
this way and that, Dove, grown loud and wilful, had ideas 
of his own, and, in addition to this, sang the whole time with 
drunken gravity: 

Sez the ragman, to the bagman, 

I’ll do yees no harm. 

“Stop it, you oaf!” cried Maurice, goaded to desperation. 
“ You beastly, blathering, drunken idiot! ” 

Then, for a street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-con- 
sciousness, and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He 
chuckled anew at the thought that somehow or other they had 
managed to outwit him. 

His intention had been to make for home, but the door 
before which they ultimately found themselves was Krafft’s. 
Maurice propped his companion against the wall, and searched 
his own pockets for a key. When he had found one, he could 
not find the door, and when this was secured, the key would 
not fit. The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he tried 
again and again, thought the keyhole was dodging him, and 
asserted the fact so violently that a window in the first storey 
was opened and a head thrust out. 

“ What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there? ” 
it cried. “You drunken Schwein , can’t you see the door’s 
open?” 

In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, 
with infinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not 
attempt to make a light ; enough came in from a street-lamp for 
him to see what he was doing. 

Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice sud- 
denly grasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, 
his best friend, and he was doing nothing to help him! Shed- 
ding tears, he poured out a glass of water. He believed he was 
putting the carafe safely back on the table, but it dropped with 


202 


MAURICE GUEST 


a crash to the floor. He was afraid Frau Schulz would come 
in, and said in a loud voice: “ It’s that fellow there, he’s dead 
drunk, beastly drunk! ” Krafft would not drink the water, and 
in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him. He stirred 
uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that 
the latter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few 
ineffectual efforts to free himself; but one arm held him like 
a vice; and in this uncomfortable position, he went to sleep. 


PART II 


O viva morte, e dilettoso male! 


Petrarch. 













f 



















I 


T HE following morning, towards twelve o’clock, a note 
from Madeleine was handed to Maurice. In it, she 
begged him to account to Schwarz for her absence 
from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken 
place at two. 

Go and explain that it is quite impossible for me to come , 
she wrote. Louise is very ill; the doctor is afraid of brain 
fever. I am rushing off this moment to see about a nurse — 
and shall stay till one comes* 

He read the words mechanically, without taking in their 
meaning. From the paper, his eyes roved round the room; 
he saw the tumbled, unopened bed, from which he had just 
risen, the traces of his boots on the coverings. He could not 
remember how he had come there; his last recollection w’as of 
being turned out of Krafft’s room, in what seemed to be still 
the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must have 
slept a dead sleep. 

“ 111? Brain fever? ” he repeated to himself, and his mind 
strove to pierce the significance of the words. What had hap- 
pened? Why should she be ill? A racking uneasiness seized 
him and would not let him rest. His inclination was to lay 
his aching head on the pillow again; but this was out of the 
question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau Krause, he now 
boldly went to her with a request to warm up his coffee. 

When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt con- 
siderably better. But he still could not call to mind what had 
occurred. The previous evening was blurred in its details; 
he only had a sense of oppression when he thought of it, as 
of something that had threatened, and still did. He was glad 
to have a definite task before him, and went out at once, in 
order to catch Schwarz before he left the Conservatorium ; but 
it was too late ; the master’s door was locked. It was a bright, 
cold day with strong sunlight; Maurice’s eyes ached, and he 
shrank from the wind at every corner. Instead of going home, 
he went to Madeleine’s room and sat down to wait for her. 

205 


206 


MAURICE GUEST 


She had evidently been away since early morning; the piano 
was dusty and unopened; the blind at the head of it had not 
been drawn up. It was a pleasant dusk; he put his arms on 
the table, his head on his arms, and, in spite of his anxiety, 
fell into a sound sleep. 

He was wakened by Madeleine’s entrance. It was three 
o’clock. She came bustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the 
piano, and at once drew up the blind. She was not surprised 
to find him there, but exclaimed at his appearance. 

“Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! "Are 
you ill? ” 

He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at 
her wasted sympathy. 

“ Well, no wonder, I’m sure, after the doings there were 
last night. A pretty way to behave! And that you should 
have mixed yourself up in it as you did! — I wouldn’t have be- 
lieved it of you. How I know? My dear boy, it’s the talk 
of the place.” 

Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of 
the past evening than he had yet been capable of. In his eager- 
ness to recollect everything, he changed colour and looked 
away. Madeleine put his confusion down to another cause. 

“ Never mind, it’s over now, and we won’t say any more 
about it. Sit still, and I’ll make you some tea. That will do 
your head good — for you have a splitting headache, haven’t 
you? I shall be glad of some myself, too, after all the running 
about I’ve had this morning. I’m quite worn out.” 

When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for 
bread and sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only 
when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a 
chance to say: “ What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill? ” 

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, she is ill enough. 
It’s not easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor 
is to see her again this evening. And I found a nurse.” 

“Then she is not going away?” He did not mean to say 
the words aloud; they escaped him against his will. 

His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with 
wrinkles. “Going away?” she echoed. “I should say not. 
My dear Maurice, what is more, it turns out she hadn’t an 
idea he was going either. What do you say to that ? ” She 
flushed with sincere indignation. “ Not an idea — until yes- 
terday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a 
word, and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it’s an 


MAURICE GUEST 


207 


abominable affair altogether! — and h?,s been from beginning to 
end. There’s much about Louise, as you know, that I don’t 
approve of, and I think she has behaved weakly — not to call 
it by a harder name — all through. But now, she has my en- 
tire sympathy. The poor girl is in a pitiable state.” 

“ Is she . . . dangerously ill ? ” 

“ Well, I don’t think she’ll die of it, exactly — though it 
might be better for her if she did. Na! ... let me fill up 
your cup. And eat something more. Oh, he is ... no words 
are bad enough for him; though honestly speaking, I think we 
might have been prepared for something of this kind, all along. 
It seems he made his arrangements for going on the quiet. 
Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of course he has 
nothing of his own. But what condition do you think the 
old wretch made? That he should break with Louise. Furst 
has told me all about it. I went to him at once this morning. 
She was always jealous of Louise — though to him she only 
talked of the holiness of art and the artist’s calling, and the 
danger of letting domestic ties entangle you, and rubbish of 
that kind. I believe she was at the bottom of it that he didn’t 
marry Louise long ago. Well, however that may be, he now 
let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on 
all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think 
he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late 
they were not getting on well together. But to be such a 
coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of 
course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, 
and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little 
room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always 
prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don’t you 
know? — and ruffle the necessary artistic composure.” She 
laughed scornfully. “ However, I’m glad to say, he didn’t 
escape scot-free after all. Everything went well till yesterday 
afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as a child, 
heard of it from some one — they say it was Krafft. Without 
thinking twice — you know her . . . or rather you don’t — 
she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. I can’t 
tell you what took place between them, but I can imagine 
something of it, for when Louise lets herself go, she knows no 
bounds, and this was a matter of life and death to her.” 

Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and 
refilled the teapot. 

“ Fraulein Griinhut, her landlady, heard her go out yester- 


208 


MAURICE GUEST 


day afternoon, but didn’t hear her come in, so it must have 
been late in the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the 
old woman is lazy, so she didn’t go to her room till about 
half-past eight this morning, when she took in the hot water. 
Then she found Louise stretched on the floor, just as she had 
come in last night, her hat lying beside her. She was con- 
scious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold, and 
wouldn’t speak or move. Griinhut couldn’t do anything with 
her, and was mortally afraid. She sent for me; and between 
us we got her to bed, and I went for a doctor. That was at 
nine, and I have been on my feet ever since.” 

“ It’s awfully good of you.” 

“ No, she won’t die,” continued Madeleine meditatively, 
stirring her tea. “ She’s too robust a nature for that. But I 
shouldn’t wonder if it affected her mind. As I say, she knows 
no bounds, and has never learnt self-restraint. It has always 
been all or nothing with her. And this I must say: however 
foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was devoted to 
Schilsky, and sacrificed everything — work, money and friends 
— to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a 
moral judgment on her. Exces s of any kind b rings it ft^own 
punishment with it.” 

She x fose~'an<r^ smoothed her hair before the mirror. 

“ And now I really must get to work, and make up for the 
lost morning. I haven’t touched a note to-day. As for you, 
Maurice, if you take my advice, you’ll go home and go to bed. 
A good sleep is what you’re needing. Come to-morrow, if 
you like, for further news. I shall go back after supper, and 
hear what the doctor says. Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye, Madeleine. You’re a brick.” 

Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the 
sofa. He was sick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story 
he had heard from Madeleine, life seemed too unjust to be 
endured. It propounded riddles no one could answer; the vast 
output of energy that composed it, was misdirected; on every 
side was cruelty and suffering. Only the heartless and selfish 
— those who deserved to suffer — went free. 

He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, de- 
spite her good deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, 
who, on a day like this, could take up her ordinary occupa- 
tion. 

In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was 
seized by a fear lest Louise should have died in the night. 


MAURICE GUEST 


209 


Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he 
went early to Madeleine, making a detour through the Bruder- 
strasse, where his suspicions were confirmed by the lowered 
blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleven o’clock 
before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his 
heart seemed to stop beating. But there was no change in the 
sick girl’s condition; the doctor was perplexed, and spoke of a 
consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o’clock to re- 
lieve the nurse. 

“ You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether,” she re- 
proved Maurice. “ And it won’t mend matters in the least. 
Go home and settle down to work, like a sensible fellow.” 

He tried to follow Madeleine’s advice. But it was of no 
use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, 
realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, 
drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific 
shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps 
lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and 
all the labour which those around him were expending on the 
cult of hand and voice and ear, seemed of a ludicrous vanity 
compared with the grim little tragedy that touched him so 
nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout the days of 
suspense that now ensued. 

He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if 
she were not at home, waited till she returned, an hour, two 
hours, as the case might be. This was the vital moment of the 
day — when he read her tidings from her face. 

At first they were always the same: there was no change. 
Fever did not set in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, 
strained eyes; she refused nourishment, and the strongest sleep- 
ing-draught had no effect. Then, early one morning, for some 
trifling cause which, afterwards, no one could recall, she broke 
into a convulsive fit of weeping, went on till she was exhausted, 
and subsequently fell asleep. 

On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he 
walked deep into the woods. The news had lifted such a load 
from his mind that he felt almost happy. But before he reached 
home again, his brain had begun to work at matters which, 
during the period of anxiety, it had left untouched. At first, 
in desperation, he had been selfless enough to hope that Schilsky 
would return, on learning what had happened. Now, how- 
ever, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely 
through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything 


210 MAURICE GUEST 

should occur to soil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he 
draped her. 

He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. 
Fiirst received him with open arms, and no allusion was made 
to the night in the Briihl. With the cessation of his anxiety, a 
feeling of benevolence towards other people awakened in him, 
and when, one afternoon, Schwarz asked the assembled class 
if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was 
ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who volunteered 
to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafft 
at the Conservatorium for a week or more. 

Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the 
door in her hand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft 
was away, she said gruffly, had been gone for about a week, she 
did not know where or why. He had left suddenly one morn- 
ing, without her knowledge, and the following day a postcard 
had come from him, stating that all his things were to lie 
untouched till his return. 

“ He was so queer lately that I’d be just as pleased if he 
stayed away altogether,” she said. “ That’s all I can tell you. 
Maybe you’d get something more out of her. She knows more 
than she says, anyhow,” and she pointed with her thumb at 
the door of the adjoining Pension. 

Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him 
Avery’s room. At his knock, she opened the door herself, and 
first looked surprised, then alarmed at seeing him. 

“What’s the matter? Has anything happened?” she stam- 
mered, like one on the look-out for bad news. 

“Then what do you want?” she asked in her short, un- 
pleasant way, when he had reassured her. 

“ I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; 
and Frau Schulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. 
Is it true that he has gone away? ” 

“ Yes, it’s true.” 

“ Where to? Will he be away long? ” 

“ How should I know ? ” she cried rudely. “ Am I his 
keeper? Find out for yourself, if you must know,” and the 
door slammed to in his face. 

He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She 
looked strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the 
subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that 
reached his ears, he tackled Fiirst, and the latter, who, up to 
this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint 


MAURICE GUEST 


21 1 


which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Neverthe- 
less, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his 
friendship with Krafft, under a different aspect. 

About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise’s 
illness; she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, 
of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly 
out of temper. 

“ Louise rubs me up the wrong way,” she complained to 
Maurice. “ And she isn’t in the least grateful for all I’ve done 
for her. I really think she prefers having the nurse about her 
to me.” 

“ Sick people often have such fancies,” he consoled her. 

“ Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have 
never got on well for long together.” 

But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and 
threw it on the piano, with a decisive haste that was charac- 
teristic of her in anger. 

“ That’s the end ; I don’t go back again. I’m not paid for 
my services, and am under no obligation to listen to such things 
as Louise said to me to-day. Enough is enough. She is well 
on the mend, and must get on now as best she can. I wash 
my hands of the whole affair.” 

“ But you’re surely not going to take what a sick person says 
seriously ? ” Maurice exclaimed in dismay. “ How can she 
possibly get on with only those strangers about her? ” 

“ She’s not so ill now. She’ll be all right,” answered Made- 
leine ; she had opened a letter that was on the table, and did not 
look up as she spoke. “ There’s a limit to everything — even to 
my patience with her rudeness.” 

And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, 
that, true to her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She 
maintained an obstinate silence about what had happened, and 
requested that he would now let the matter drop. 

The truth was that Madeleine’s conscience was by no means 
easy. 

She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with 
even more inconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting 
her, Fraulein Griinhut had endeavoured to detain her in the 
passage, mumbling and gesticulating in the mystery-monger- 
ing way with which Madeleine had no patience. It incited 
her to answer the old woman in a loud, clear voice; then, 
brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of the sick 
girl’s room. 


212 


MAURICE GUEST 


As she did so, she utttered an exclamation of surprise. Louise, 
in a flannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled stove 
behind the door. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, 
and she leant her forehead against the tiles. 

“Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?” cried 
Madeleine ; and, as she looked round the room : “ And where 
is Sister Martha? ” 

Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came 
in contact with the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from un- 
der her heavy lids, without replying. 

Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small pur- 
chases she had made on the way there. 

“ Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day? ” she said 
in a pleasant voice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. “ Or tell me 
what I ask about the Sister? ” There was not a shade of um- 
brage in her tone. 

Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Made- 
leine to the wall of the room. “ I have got up,” she answered, 
in such a low voice that Madeleine had to pause in what she 
was doing, to hear her; “ because I could not bear to lie in bed 
any longer. And I’ve sent the Sister away — because . . . oh, 
because I couldn’t endure having her about me.” 

“You have sent Sister Martha away?” echoed Madeleine. 
“ On your own responsibility? Louise! — how absurd! Well, 
I suppose I must put on my hat again and fetch her back. How 
can you get on alone, I should like to know ? Really, I have no 
time to come oftener than I do.” 

“ I’m quite well now. I don’t need anyone.” 

“ Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make 
you some tea,” said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that 
one uses to a sick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom 
it is not fitting to dispute. 

Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low Ameri- 
can rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently. 

“ I wish I had died,” she said in a toneless voice. 

Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled 
the tea-cups. “ Nonsense! You mustn’t talk about dyings — now 
that you are nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things 
are easily said. One doesn’t mean them.” 

“ I wish I had died. Why didn’t you let me die? ” repeated 
Louise in the same apathetic way. 

Madeleine did not reply ; she was cogitating whether it would 
be more convenient t(5 go after the nurse at once, and what she 


MAURICE GUEST 


213 

ought to do if she could not get her to come back. For Louise 
would certainly have despatched her in tragedy-fashion. 

Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms 
of the chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her 
hands. In their way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind 
of fame, which she had once been vain of. They had been pho- 
tographed ; a sculptor had modelled them for a statue of Antig- 
one — long, slim and strong, with closely knit fingers, and . pale, 
deep-set nails : hands like those of an adoring Virgin ; hands 
which had an eloquent language all their own, but little or no 
agilitj r , and which were out of place on the keys of a piano. 
Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed — the 
hollow setting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones 
beneath ; the lines were hammered black below the eyes ; nostrils 
and lips were pinched and thinned — that Madeleine, secretly 
observing her, remarked to herself that Louise looked at least 
ten years older than before. Her youth, and, with it, such fresh- 
ness as she had once had, were gone from her. 

“ Here is your tea.” 

The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, 
while Madeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, 
and opening a window. This done, she looked at her watch. 

“ I will go now,” she said, “ and see if I can persuade Sister 
Martha to come back. If you haven’t mortally offended her, 
that is.” 

Louise started up from her chair, and put her cup, only half 
emptied, on the table. 

“ Madeleine ! — please — please, don’t ! I can’t have her back 
again. I am quite well now. There was nothing more she 
could do for me. I shall sleep a thousand times better at night 
if she is not here. Oh, don’t bring her back again ! Her voice 
cut like a knife, and her hands were so hard.” 

She trembled with excitement, and was on the brink of 
tears. 

“ Hush! — don’t excite yourself like that,” said Madeleine, 
and tried to soothe her. “ There’s no need for it. If you are 
really determined not to have her, then she shall not come — 
and that’s the end of it. Not but what I think it foolish of 
you all the same,” she could not refrain from adding. “You 
are still weak. However, if you prefer it, I’ll do my best to 
run up this evening to see that you have everything for the 
night.” 

“ I don’t want you either.” 


214 MAURICE GUEST 

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders, and her pity became tinged 
with impatience. 

“ The doctor says you must go away somewhere, for a 
change,” she said as she beat up the pillows and smoothed out 
the crumpled sheets, preparatory to coaxing her patient back 
to bed. 

Louise shook her head, but did not speak. 

“ A few weeks’ change of air is what you need to set you up 
again.” 

“ I cannot go away.” 

“ Nonsense! Of course you can. You don’t want to be ill 
all the winter? ” 

“ I don’t want to be well.” 

Madeleine sniffed audibly. “ There’s no reasoning with you. 
When you hear on all sides that it’s for your own good ” 

“ Oh, stop tormenting me ! ” cried Louise, raising a drawn 
face with disordered hair. “ I won’t go away! Nothing will 
make me. I shall stay here — though I never get well again.” 

“ But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going. — 
You can’t! ” 

“ Yes ... if ... if Eugen should come back.” 

The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, hold- 
ing a sheet with both hands, as though she could not believe 
her ears. 

“Louise!” she said at last, in a tone which meant many 
things. 

Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. 
Madeleine did not look at her again, but went severely on with 
her bedmaking. When she had finished, she crossed to the 
washstand, and poured out a glass of water. 

Louise took it, humbled and submissive, and gradually her 
sobs abated. But now Madeleine, in place of getting ready to 
leave, as she had intended, sat down at the centre table, and 
revolved what she felt it to be her duty to say. When all sound 
of crying had ceased, she began to speak, persuasively, in a quiet 
voice. 

“ You have brought the matter up yourself, Louise,” she said, 
“ and, now the ice is broken, there are one or two things I 
should like to say to you. First then, you have been very ill, 
far worse than you know — the immediate danger is over now, 
so I can speak of it. But who can tell what may happen if you 
persist in remaining on here by yourself, in the state you are in ? ” 

Louise did not stir; her face was hidden. 


MAURICE GUEST 


215 


“ The reason you give for staying is not a serious one, I 
hope,” Madeleine proceeded cautiously choosing her words. 
“ After all the ... the precautions that were taken to ensure 
the . . . break, it is not all likely ... he would think of 
returning. And Louise,” she added with warmth, “ even though 
he did — suppose he did — after the way he has behaved, and his 
disgraceful treatment of you ” 

Louise looked up for an instant. “ That is not true,” she 
said. 

“ Not true? ” echoed Madeleine. “ Well, if you are able to 
admire his behaviour — if you don’t consider it disgraceful — no, 

more than that — infamous ” She stopped, not being able 

to find a stronger epithet. 

“ It is not true,” said Louise in the same expressionless voice. 
But now she lifted her head, and pressed the palms of her hands 
together. 

Madeleine pushed back her chair, as if she were about to rise. 
“ Then I have nothing more to say,” she said ; and went on : 
“If you are ready to defend a man who has acted towards you 
as he has — in a way that makes a respectable person’s blood 
boil — there is indeed nothing more to be said.” She reddened 
with indignation. “ As if it were not bad enough for him to go, 
after all you have done for him, but that he must do it in such 
a mean, underhand way — it’s enough to make one sick. The 
only thing to compare with it is his conduct on the night 
before he left. Do you know, pray, that on the last evening, at 
a Kneipe in the Goldene Hirsch, he boasted of what you had 
done for him — boasted about everything that had happened be- 
tween you — to a rowdy, tipsy crew? More than that, he gave 
shameless details, about you going to his room that after- 
noon ” 

“ It’s not true, it’s not true,” repeated Louise, as if she had 
got these few words by heart. She rose from her chair, and 
leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding 
her handkerchief to her lips. 

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “ Do you think I should 
say it, if it weren’t ? ” she asked. “ I don’t invent scandal. And 
you are bound to hear it when you go out again. He did this, 
and worse than I choose to tell you, and if you felt as you ought 
to about it, you would never give him another thought? He’s 
not worth it. He’s not worth any respectable person’s ” 

“ Respectable ! ” burst in Louise, and raised two blazing 
eyes to her companion’s face. “ That’s the second time. Why 


2l6 


MAURICE GUEST 


do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He 
did what he was obliged to — that’s all : for I should never have 
let him go. Can’t you see how preposterous it is to think that 
by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make 
me leave off caring for him? — .when for months I have lived 
for nothing else? Do you think one can change one’s feelings 
so easily? Don’t you understand that to love a person once is 
to love him always and altogether? — his faults as well — every- 
thing he does, good or bad, no matter what other people think 
of it? Oh, you have never really cared for anyone yourself, 
or you would know it.” 

“ It’s not preposterous at all,” retorted Madeleine. “ Yes — 
if he had deserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if 
unhappy circumstances had separated you. But that’s not the 
case. He has behaved scandalously, without the least at- 
tempt at shielding you. He has made you the talk of the place. 
And you may consider me narrow and prejudiced, but this I 
must say — I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has 
shown you as plainly as he can that he’s tired of you, that you 
should still be ready to defend him, and have so little proper 
pride that you even say you would take him back ! ” 

Louise turned on her. “You would never do that, Made- 
leine, would you? — never so far forget yourself as to crawl 
to a man’s feet and ask — ask? — no, implore forgiveness, for 
faults you were not conscious of having committed. You 
would never beg him to go on loving you, after he had ceased 
to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if he 
would not — or could not. As I would; as I have done.” But 
chancing to look at Madeleine, she grew quieter. “ You would 
never do that, would you? ” she repeated. “ And do you know 
why? ” Her words came quickly again; her voice shook with 
excitement. “ Because you will never care for anyone more than 
yourself — it isn’t in you to do it. You will go through life, 
right on to the end, without knowing what it is to care for some 
one — oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly ” 

She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had car- 
ried the cups and saucers to a side-table, and now put on 
her hat. 

“ And I hope I never shall,” she said, forcing herself to speak 
calmly. " If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man 
again.” 

But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of 
the rocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Made- 


MAURICE GUEST 


217 


leine with wild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind 
of revenge for the suffering, real and imaginary, that she had 
undergone at the hands of this cooler nature. 

“ And I’ll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will 
never be able to make a man care so much that — that you are 
forced to love him like this in return. It isn’t in you to do it. 
I don’t mean because you’re plain. There are plenty of plainer 
women than you, who can make men follow them. No, it’s 
your nature — your cold, narrow, egotistic nature — which only 
lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. 
You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, 
taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls 
away.” 

She laughed; but tears were near at hand. Madeleine had 
turned her back on her, and stood buttoning her jacket, with a 
red, exasperated face. 

“I shall not answer you,” she said. “You have worked 
yourself into such a state that you don’t know what you’re 
saying. All the same, I think you might try to curb your 
tongue. I have done nothing to you — but be kind to you.” 

“ Kind to me? Do you call it kind to come here and try to 
set me. against the man I love best in the world? And who 
loves me best, too. Yes; he does. He would never have gone, 
if he hadn’t been forced to — if I hadn’t been a hindrance to 
him — a drag on him.” 

“ It makes me ashamed of my sex to hear you say such things. 
That a woman can so far lose her pride as to ” 

“ Oh, other women do it in other ways. Do you think I 
haven’t seen how you have been trying to make some one here 
like you ? — doing your utmost, without any thoughts of pride or 
self-respect. — And how you have failed? Yes, failed. And if 
you don’t believe me, ask him yourself — ask him who it is that 
could bring him to her, just by raising her finger. It’s to me 
he would come, not to you — to me who have never given him 
look or thought.” 

Madeleine paled, then went scarlet. “ That’s a direct un- 
truth. You! — and not to egg a man on, if you see he admires 
you! You know every time a passer-by looks at you in the 
street. You feed on such looks — yes, and return them, too. I 
have seen you, my lady, looking and being looked at, by a 
stranger, in a way no decent woman allows. — For the rest, I’ll 
trouble you to mind your own business. Whatever I do or 
don’t do, trust me, I shall at least take care not to make myself 


2l8 


MAURICE GUEST 


the laughing-stock of the place. Yes, you have only succeeded 
in making yourself ridiculous. For while you were cringing 
before him, and aspiring to die for his sake, he was making 
love behind your back to another girl. For the last six months. 
Every one knew it, it seems, but you.” 

She had spoken with unconcealed anger, and now turned to 
leave the room. But Louise was at the door before her, and 
spread herself across it. 

“That’s a lie, Madeleine! Of your own making. You 
shall prove it to me before you go out of this room. How dare 
you say such a thing ! — how dare you ! ” 

Madeleine looked at her with cold aversion, and drew back 
to avoid touching her. 

“Prove it?” she echoed. “Are his own words not proof 
enough! He told the whole story that night, just as he had 
first told all about you. It had been going on for months. 
Sometimes, you were hardly out of his room, before the other 
was in. And if you don’t believe me, ask the person you’re so 
proud of having attracted, without raising your finger.” 

Louise moved away from the door, and went back to the 
table, on which she leaned heavily. All the blood had left her 
face and the dark rings below her eyes stood out with alarming 
distinctness. Madeleine felt a sudden compunction at what she 
had done. 

“ It’s entirely your own fault that I told you anything what- 
ever about it,” she said, heartily annoyed with herself. “You 
had no right to provoke me by saying what you did. I declare, 
Louise, to be with you makes one just like you. If it’s any 
consolation to you to know it, he was drunk at the time, and 
there’s a possibility it may not be true.” 

“ Go away — go out of my room ! ” cried Louise. And Made- 
leine went, without delay, having almost a physical sensation 
about her throat of the slender hands stretched so threateningly 
towards her. — And this unpleasant feeling remained with her 
until she turned the corner of the street. 


II 


On the afternoon when Maurice found that Madeleine had 
kept her word he went home and paced his room in perplexity. 
He pictured Louise lying helpless, too weak to raise her hand. 
His brain went stupidly over the few people to whom he might 
turn for aid. Avery Hill? — Johanna Cayhill? But Avery 
was occupied with her own troubles; and Johanna’s relation- 
ship to Ephie put her out of the question. He was thinking 
fantastic thoughts of somehow offering his own services, or of 
even throwing himself on the goodness of a person like Miss 
Jensen, whose motherly form must surely imply a correspond- 
ing motherliness of heart, when Frau Krause entered the room, 
bearing a letter which she said had been left for him an hour 
or two previously. She carried a lamp in her hand, and eyed 
her restless lodger with suspicion. 

“ Why, in the name of goodness, didn’t you bring this in 
when it came ? ” he demanded. He held the unopened letter at 
arm’s length, as if he were afraid of it. 

Frau Krause bridled instantly. Did he think she had noth- 
ing else to do than to carry things in and out of his room? The 
letter had lain on the chest of drawers in the passage; he could 
have seen it for himself, had he troubled to look. 

Maurice waved her away. He was staring at the envelope; 
he believed he knew the handwriting. His heart beat with 
precise hammerings. He laid the letter on the table, and took 
a few turns in the room before he picked it up again. On 
examining it anew, it seemed to him that the lightly gummed 
envelope had been tampered with, and he made a threatening 
movement towards the door, then checked himself, remember- 
ing that if the letter were what he believed, it would be written 
in English. He tore it open, destroying the envelope in his 
nervousness. There was no heading, and it was only a few 
lines long. 

I must speak to you. Will you come to me this evening ? 

Louise Dufrayer. 

His heart was thumping now. He was to go to her, she said 
219 


220 


MAURICE GUEST 


so herself; to go this moment, for it was evening already. As 
it was, she was perhaps waiting for him, wondering why he 
did not come. He had not shaved that day, and his first im- 
pulse was to call for hot water. In the same breath he gave up 
the idea: it was out of the question by the poor light of the 
lamp, and the extraordinary position of the looking-glass. He 
made, however, a hasty toilet in his best, only to colour at him- 
self when finished. Was there ever such a fool as he? His 
act contained the germ of an insult: and he rapidly changed 
back to his workaday wear. 

All this took time, and it was eight o’clock before he rang 
the door-bell in the Briiderstrasse. Now, the landlady did not 
mistake him for a possible thief. But she looked at him in an 
unfriendly way, and said grumblingly that Fniulein had been 
expecting him for an hour or more. Then she pointed to the 
door of the room, and left him to make his way in alone. 

He knocked gently, but no one answered. The old woman, 
who stood watching his movements, signed to him to enter, and 
he turned the handle. The large room was dark, except for the 
light shed by a small lamp, which stood on the table before 
the sofa. From somewhere out of the dusk that lay beyond, a 
white figure rose and came towards him. 

Louise was in a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was 
loosened from its coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, be- 
fore she was close beside him, her eyes searching his face. 

“ Oh, you have come,” she said with a sigh, as if a load had 
been lifted from her mind. “ I thought you were not coming.” 

“ I only got your note a few minutes ago. I ... I came at 
once,” he said, and stammered, as he saw how greatly illness 
had changed her. 

“ I knew you would.” 

She did not give him her hand, but stood gazing at him ; and 
her look was so helpless and forlorn that he grew uncomfortable. 

“You have been ill? ” he said, to render the pause that fol- 
lowed less embarrassing. 

“Yes; but I’m better now.” She supported herself on the 
table; her indecision seemed to increase, and several seconds 
passed before she said : “ Won’t you sit down ? ” 

He took one of the stuffed arm-chairs she indicated ; and she 
went back to the sofa. Again there was silence. With her 
elbows on her knees, her chin on her two hands, Louise stared 
hard at the pattern of the tablecloth. Maurice sat stiff and 
erect, waiting for her to tell him why she had summoned him. 


MAURICE GUEST 


221 


“You will think it strange that I should send for you like 
this . . . when I know you so slightly,” she began at length. 
“ But . . . since I saw you last ... I have been in trouble,” 
— her voice broke, but her eyes remained fixed on the cloth. 
“ And I am quite alone. I have no one to help me. Then 
I thought of you; you were kind to me once; you offered 
to help me.” She paused, and wound her handkerchief to a 
ball. 

“Anything! — anything that lies in my power,” said Maurice 
fervently. He fidgeted his hands round the brim of his hat, 
which he was holding to him. 

“ Won’t you tell me what it is? ” he asked, after another long 
break. “ I should be so glad, and grateful — yes, indeed, grate- 
ful — if there were anything I could do for you.” 

She met his eyes, and tried to say something, but no sound 
came over her lips. She was trying to fasten her thoughts on 
what she had to say, but, in spite of her efforts, they eluded her. 
For more than twenty- four hours she had brooded over one 
idea; the strain had been too great; and, now that the moment 
had come, her strength deserted her. She would have liked to 
lay her head on her arms and sleep; it almost seemed to her 
now, in the indifference of sheer fatigue, that it did not matter 
whether she spoke or not. But as she looked at the young man, 
she became conscious of an expression in his face, which made 
her own grow hard. 

“ I won’t be pitied.” 

Maurice turned very red. His heart had gone out to her in 
her distress; and his feelings were painted on his face. His 
discomfiture at her discovery was so palpable that it gave her 
courage to go on. 

“ You were one of those, were you not, who were present at 
a certain cafe in the Briihl , one evening, three weeks ago.” It 
was more of a statement than a question. Her eyes held him 
fast. His retreating colour rose again; he had a presentiment 
of what was coming. 

“ Then you must have heard — * — ” she began quickly, but 
left the sentence unended. 

His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture 
of dissent. 

“ You heard all that was said,” she continued, without pay- 
ing any heed to him. “ You heard how . . . how some one 
— no, how the man I loved and trusted . . . how he boasted 
about my caring for him; and not only that, but how, before 


222 


MAURICE GUEST 


that drunken crowd, he told how I had been to him . . . 

to his room . . . that afternoon ” She could not finish, 

and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips. 

Maurice looked round him for assistance. “ You are mis- 
taken/’ he declared. “ I heard nothing of the kind. Remem- 
ber, I, too, was among those ... in the state you mention,” 
he added as an afterthought, lowering his voice. 

“ That is not it.” Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so 
wide that he saw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. 
“ You must also have heard . . . how, all this time, behind 
my back, there was some one else . . . someone he cared 
for . . . when I thought it was only me.” 

The young man coloured, with her and for her. “ It is not 
true; you have been misled,” he said with vehemence. And, 
again, a flash of intuition suggested an afterthought to him. 
“ Can you really believe it? Don’t you think better of him than 
that?” 

For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him 
a personal look, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a 
warm ray of gratitude. Then, however, she went on unspar- 
ingly: “ I want you to tell me who it was.” 

He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. “ But if I 
assure you it is not true ? If I give you my word that you have 
been misinformed ? ” 

“Who was it? What is her name?” 

He rose, and went away from the table. 

“ I knew him better than you,” she said slowly, as he did not 
speak: “you or anyone else — a hundred thousand times better 
— and I know it is true.” 

Still he did not answer. 

“ Then you won’t tell me? ” 

“Tell you? How can I? There’s nothing to tell.” 

“ I was wrong then. You have no pity for me? ” 

“ Pity! — I no pity? ” he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, 
she had resented his feeling it. “ But all the same I can’t tell 
you what you ask me. You don’t realise what it means: putting 
a slur on a young girl’s name . . . which has never been 
touched.” 

Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; 
but she let the admission contained in the words pass un- 
noticed. 

“Then she is not with him?” she cried, springing to her 
feet, and there was a jubilation in her voice, which she did not 


MAURICE GUEST 


223 


attempt to suppress. Maurice made no answer, but in his face 
was such a mixture of surprise and disconcertion that it was 
answer enough. 

She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, 
who, in his nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held 
it so tightly that it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking 
into the lamp, and did not at first see that Louise had raised 
her head again and was contemplating him. When she had 
succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa 
and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her. 

,4 “ Come and sit here. I want to speak to you.” 

But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not 
move. 

She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the 
heavy wings of hair up from her forehead, and this, together 
with her extreme pallor, gave her face a look of febrile in- 
tensity. 

“ Maurice Guest,” she said slowly, “ do you remember a 
night last summer, when, by chance, you happened to walk with 
me, coming home from the theatre? — Or have you perhaps 
forgotten ? ” 

He shook his head. 

“ Then do you remember, too, what you said to me ? How, 
since the first time you had seen me — you even knew where that 
was, I believe — you had thought about me . . . thought too 
much, or words to that effect. Do you remember? ” 

“ Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets 
it? ” asked Maurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, 
and looked down on her with a kind of pitying wisdom. “ If 
you knew how often I have reproached myself for it ! ” he 
added. 

“ There was no need for that,” she answered, and even smiled 
a little. “ We women never resent having such things said to 
us — never — though it is supposed we do, and though we must 
pretend to. But I remember, too, I was in a bad mood that 
night, and was angry with you, after all. Everything seemed 
to have gone against me. In the theatre — in . . . Oh, no, 
no ! ” she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with its 
alternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. “ My God ! ” 

Maurice hardly breathed, for fear he should remind her of 
his presence. When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to 
the window; the blinds had not been drawn, and leaning her 
forehead on the glass, she looked out into the darkness. In 


224 


MAURICE GUEST 


spite of his trouble of mind, the young man could not but 
comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating 
him: not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement 
below, had Louise come, like this, to the window ; now that she 
did so, he was in the room beside her, wishing himself away. 

Then, with a swift movement, she came back to him, and 
stood at his side. 

“ Then it was not true ? — what you said that night.” 

“True?” echoed Maurice. He instinctively moved a step 
away from her, and threw a quick glance at the pale face so 
near his own. “ If I were to tell you how much more than that 
is true, you wouldn’t have anything more to do with me.” 

For the second time, she seemed to see him and consider him. 
But he kept his head turned stubbornly away. 

“ You feel like that,” she began in slow surprise, to con- 
tinue hurriedly: “You care for me like that, and yet, when I 
ask the first and only thing I shall ever ask of you, you 
won’t do it? It is a lesson to me, I suppose, not to come to 
you for help again. — Oh, I can’t understand you men! You are 
all— all alike.” 

“ I would do anything in the world for you. Anything but 
this.” 

She repeated his last words after him. “ But I want nothing 
else.” 

“ This I can’t tell you.” 

“Then you don’t really care. You only think you do. If 
you can’t do this one small thing for me! Oh, there is no one 
else I can turn to, or I would. Oh, please tell me! — you who 
make-believe to care for me. You won’t? When it comes to 
the point, a man will do nothing — nothing at all.” 

“ I would cut off my hands for you. But you are asking me 
to do something T think wrong.” 

“Wrong! What is wrong? — and what is right? They are 
only words. Is it right that I should be left like this? — 
thrown away like a broken plate? Oh, I shall not rest till 
I know who it was that took him from me. And you are the 
only person who can help me. Are you not a little sorry for 
me? Is there nothing I can do to make you sorry?” 

“ You won’t realise what you are asking me to do.” 

He spoke in a constrained voice, for he felt the impossiblity 
of standing out much longer against her. Louise caught the 
note of yielding, and taking his hand in hers, laid it against 
her forehead. 


MAURICE GUEST 


225 


“Feel that! Feel how it throbs and burns! And so it has 
gone on for hours now, for days. I can’t think or feel — with 
that fever in me. I must know who it was, or I shall go mad. 
Don’t torture me then — you, too! You are good. Be kind to 
me now. Be my friend, Maurice Guest.” 

Maurice was vanquished ; in a low voice he told her what she 
wished to hear. She read the syllables from his lips, repeated 
the name slowly after him, then shook her head; she did not 
know it. Letting his hand drop, she went back to the sofa. 

“Tell me everything you know about her/’ she said im- 
periously. “What is she like? — what is she like? What is 
the colour of her hair? ” 

Maurice was a poor hand at description. Questioned thus, 
he was not even sure whether to call Ephie pretty or not; he 
knew that she was small, and very young, but of her hair he 
could say little, except that it was not black. 

Louise caught at the detail. “Not black, no, not black!” 
she cried. “ He had black enough here,” and she ran her 
hands through her own unruly hair. 

There was nothing she did not want to know, did not try to 
force from his lips; and a relentless impatience seized her at his 
powerlessness. 

“ I must see her for myself,” she said at length, when he had 
stammered into silence. “ You must bring her to me.” 

“ No, that you really can’t ask me to do.” 

She came over to him again, and took his hands. “ You will 
bring her here to-morrow — to-morrow afternoon. Do you think 
I shall hurt her? Is she any better than I am? Oh, don’t be 
afraid! We are not so easily soiled.” 

Maurice demurred no more. 

“ For until I see her, I shall not know — I shall not know,” 
she said to herself, when he had pledged his word. 

The tense expression of her face relaxed ; her mouth drooped ; 
she lay back in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what 
seemed a long time, there was no sound in the room. Maurice 
thought she had fallen asleep. But at his first light movement 
she opened her eyes. 

“ Now go,” she said. “ Please, go! ” And he obeyed. 

The night was cold, but, as he stood irresolute in the street, 
he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He felt very per- 
plexed. Only one thing was clear to him: he had promised to 
bring Ephie to see her the next day, and, however wrong it 
might be, the promise was given and must be kept. But what 


226 


MAURICE GUEST 


he now asked himself was: did not the bringing of the child, 
under these circumstances, imply a tacit acknowledgment that 
she was seriously involved? — a fact which, all along, he had 
striven against admitting. For, after his one encounter with 
Ephie and Schilsky, in the woods that summer, and the first 
firing of his suspicions, he had seen nothing else to render him 
uneasy; a few weeks later, Ephie had gone to Switzerland, and, 
on her return in September, or almost directly afterwards — 
three or four days at most — Schilsky had taken his departure. 
There had been, of course, his drunken boasts to take into ac- 
count, but firstly, Maurice had only retained a hazy idea of their 
nature, and, in the next place, the events which had followed that 
evening had been of so much greater importance to him that 
he had had no thoughts to spare for Ephie — more especially as 
he then knew that Schilsky was out of the way. But now the 
whole affair rose vividly before his mind again, and in his heart 
he knew that he had always believed — just as Louise believed — - 
in Ephie’s guilt. No: guilt was too strong a word. Yet how- 
ever harmless the flirtation might have been in itself, it had been 
carried on in secret, in an underhand way: there had been noth- 
ing straightforward or above-board about it ; and this alone was 
enough to compromise a young girl. 

The Cayhills had been in Leipzig again for three weeks, but 
so occupied had Maurice been during this time, that he had 
only paid them one hasty call. Now he felt that he must see 
Ephie at once, not only to secure her word that she would come 
out with him, the following day, but also to read from her frank 
eyes and childish lips the assurance of her innocence, or, at least, 
the impossibility of her guilt. 

But as he walked to the Lessingstrasse, he remembered, with- 
out being able to help it, all the trifles which, at one time or an- 
other, had disturbed his relations with Ephie. He recalled each 
of the thin, superficial untruths, by means of which she had de- 
fended herself, the day he had met her with Schilsky : it seemed 
incredible to him now that he had not seen through them in- 
stantly. He called up her pretty, insincere behaviour with the 
circle of young men that gathered round her; the language of 
signs by which she had conversed with Schilsky in the theatre. 
He remembered the astounding ease with which he had made 
her acquaintance in the first case, or rather, with which she had 
made his. Even the innocent kiss she had once openly incited 
him to, and on the score of which she had been so exaggeratedly 
angry — this, too, was summoned to bear witness against her. 


MAURICE GUEST 


227 


Each of these incidents now seemed to point to a fatal frivolity, 
to a levity of character which, put to a real test, would offer no 
resistance. 

Supper was over in the Pension , but only Mrs. Cayhill sat 
in her accustomed corner. Ephie was with the rest of the 
boarders in the general sitting-room, where Johanna conducted 
Maurice. Boehmer was paying an evening visit, as well as 
a very young American, who laughed : “ Heh, heh ! ” at every- 

thing that was said, thereby displaying two prominently gold 
teeth. Mrs. Tully sat on a small sofa, with her arm round 
Ephie’s waist: they were the centre of the group, and it did not 
appear likely that Maurice would get an opportunity of speak- 
ing to Ephie in private. She was in high spirits, and had only 
a saucy greeting for him. He sat down beside Johanna, and 
waited, ill at ease. Soon his patience was exhausted; rising, 
he went over to the sofa, and asked Ephie if he might come to 
take her for a walk, the next afternoon. But she would not 
give him an express promise; she pouted: after all these weeks, 
it suddenly occurred to him to come and see them, and then, 
the first thing he did, was to ask a favour of her. Did he really 
expect her to grant it? 

“Don’t, Ephie, love, don't!” cried Mrs. Tully in her 
sprightly way. “ Men are really shocking creatures, and it is 
our duty, love, to keep them in their place. If we don’t, they 
grow presumptuous,” and she shot an arch look at Boehmer, who 
returned it, fingered his beard, and murmured: “ Cruel — cruel! ” 

“ And even if I wanted to go when the time came, how do 
you expect me to know so long beforehand? Ever so many 
things may happen before to-morrow,” said Ephie brilliantly; 
at which Mrs. Tully laughed very much indeed, and still more 
at Boehmer’s remark that it was an ancient privilege of the 
ladies, never to be obliged to know their own minds. 

“It’s a libel — take that, you naughty boy! ” she cried, and 
slapped him playfully on the hand. “ Ephie, love, how shall 
we punish him ? ” 

“ He is not to come again for a week,” answered Ephie slily; 
and at Boehmer’s protestations of penitence and despair, both 
she and Mrs. Tully laughed till the tears stood in their eyes, 
Ephie all the more extravagantly because Maurice stood un- 
smiling before her. 

“ I ask this as a direct favour, Ephie. There’s something I 
want to say to you — something important,” he added in a low 
voice, so that only she could hear it. 


228 


MAURICE GUEST 


Ephie changed colour at once, and tried to read his face. 

“Then I may come at five? You will be ready? Good 
night.” 

Johanna followed him into the passage, and stood by while 
he put on his coat. They had used up all their small talk in 
the sitting-room, and had nothing more to say to each other. 
When however they shook hands, she observed impulsively: 
“ Sometimes I wish we were safe back home again.” But 
Maurice only said : “ Indeed ? ” and displayed no curiosity to 
know the reason why. 

After he had gone, Ephie was livelier than before, as long as 
she was being teased about her pale, importunate admirer. Then, 
suddenly, she pleaded a headache, and went to her own room. 

Johanna, listening outside the door, concluded from the still- 
ness that her sister was asleep. But Ephie heard Johanna come 
and go. She could not sleep, nor could she get Maurice’s 
words out of her mind. He had something important to say 
to her. What could it be? There was only one important 
subject in the world for her now; and she longed for the hour 
of his visit — longed, hoped, and was more than half afraid. 


Ill 


Since her return to Leipzig, Ephie’s spirits had gone up and 
down like a barometer in spring. In this short time, she passed 
through more changes of mood than in all her previous life. 
She learned what uncertainty meant, and suspense, and help- 
lessness; she caught at any straw of hope, and, for a day on 
end, would be almost comforted ; she invented numberless ex- 
cuses for Schilsky, and rejected them, one and all. For she was 
quite in the dark about his movements; she had not seen 
him since her return, and could hear nothing of him. Only 
the first of the letters she had written to him from Switzerland 
had elicited a reply, and he had left all the notes she had sent 
him, since getting back, unanswered. 

Her fellow-boarder, Mrs. Tully, was her only confidant; 
and that, only in so far as this lady, knowing that what she 
called “ a little romance ” was going on, had undertaken to 
enclose any letters that might arrive during Ephie’s absence. 
Johanna had no suspicions, or rather she had hitherto had none. 
In the course of the past week, however, it had become plain 
even to her blind, sisterly eyes that something was the matter 
with Ephie. She could still be lively when she liked, almost 
unnaturally lively, and especially in the company of Mrs. Tully 
and her circle; but with these high spirits alternated fits of de- 
pression, and once Johanna had come upon her in tears. Driven 
into a corner, Ephie declared that Herr Becker had scolded her 
at her lesson; but Johanna was not satisfied with this explana- 
tion ; for formerly, the master’s blame or praise had left no im- 
pression on her little sister’s mind. Even worse than this, 
Ephie could now, on slight provocation, be thoroughly peevish — 
a thing so new in her that it worried Johanna most of all. The 
long walks of the summer had been given up ; but Ephie had 
adopted a way of going in and out of the house, just as it 
pleased her, without a word to her sister. Johanna scrutinised 
her keenly, and the result was so disturbing that she resolved 
to broach the subject to her mother. 

On the morning after Maurice’s visit, therefore, she appeared 
in the sitting-room, with a heap of undarned stockings in one 

229 


230 


MAURICE GUEST 


hand, her work-basket in the other, and with a very determined 
expression on her face. But the moment was not a happy one: 
Mrs. Cayhill was deep in Why Paul Ferrol Killed his Wife; 
and would be lost to her surroundings until the end of the 
book was reached. Had Johanna been of an observant turn 
of mind, she would have waited a little; for, finding the 
intermediate portion of the novel dry reading, Mrs. Cayhill 
was getting over the pages at the rate of three or four a minute, 
and would soon have been finished. 

But Johanna sat down at the table and opened fire. 

“ I wish to speak to you, mother,” she said firmly. 

Mrs. Cayhill did not even blink. Johanna drew several 
threads across a hole she was darning, before she repeated, in 
the same decided tone: “ Do you hear me, mother? There is 
something I wish to speak to you about.” 

“ Hm,” said Mrs. Cayhill, without raising her eyes from the 
page. She heard Johanna, and was even vaguely distracted by 
her from the web of circumstance that was enveloping her hero ; 
but she believed, from experience, that if she took no notice of 
her, Johanna would not persist. What the latter had to say 
would only be a reminder that it was mail-day, and no letters 
were ready; or that if she did not put on her bonnet and go out 
for a walk, she would be obliged to take another of her nerve- 
powders that night: and Mrs. Cayhill hated moral persuasion 
with all her heart. 

“ Put down your book, mother, please, and listen to me,” 
continued Johanna, without any outward sign of impatience, 
and as she spoke, she drew another stocking over her hand. 

“ What is the matter, Joan? I wish you would let me be,” 
answered Mrs. Cayhill querulously, still without looking up. 

“ It’s about Ephie, mother. But you can’t hear me if you 
go on reading.” 

“ I can hear well enough,” said Mrs. Cayhill, and turning 
a page, she lost herself, to all appearance, in the next one. 
Johanna did not reply, and for some minutes there was silence, 
broken only by the turning of the leaves. Then, compelled by 
something that was stronger than herself, Mrs. Cayhill laid her 
book on her knee, gave a loud sigh, and glanced at Johanna’s 
grave face. 

“You are a nuisance, Joan. Well, make haste now — what 
is it?” 

“ It’s Ephie, mother. I am not easy about her lately. I don’t 
think she can be well. She is so unlike herself.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


231 


“ Really, Joan,” said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing with an exag- 
gerated carelessness. “ I think I should be the first to notice 
if she were sick. But you like to make yourself important, that’s 
what it is, and to have a finger in every pie. There is nothing 
whatever the matter with the child.” 

“ She’s not well, I’m sure,” persisted Johanna, without haste. 
“ I have noticed it for some time now. I think the air here is 
not agreeing with her. I constantly hear it said that this is an 
enervating place. I believe it would be better for her if we 
went somewhere else for the winter — even if we returned home. 
Nothing binds us, and health is the first and chief ” 

“ Go home? ” cried Mrs. Cayhill, and turned her book over 
on its face. “ Really, Joan, you are absurd ! Because Ephie 
finds it hard to settle down again, after such a long vacation 
— and that’s all it is — you want to rush off to a fresh place, 
when . . . when we are just so comfortably fixed here for 
the winter, and where we have at last gotten us a few friends. 
As for going home, why, every one would suppose we’d gone 
crazy. We haven’t been away six months yet — and when 
Mr. Cayhill is coming over to fetch us back — and . . . and 
everything.” 

She spoke with heat ; for she knew from experience that what 
her elder daughter resolved on, was likely to be carried through. 

“ That is all very well, mother,” continued Johanna unmoved. 
“ But I don’t think your arguments are sound if we find that 
Ephie is really sick, and needs a change.” 

“ Arguments not sound ! What big words you love to use, 
Joan! You let Ephie be. She grows prettier every day, and 
she’s a favourite wherever she goes.” 

“ That’s another thing. Her head is being turned, and she 
will soon be quite spoilt. She begins to like the fuss and atten- 
tion so well that ” 

“ You had your chances too, Joan. You needn’t be jealous.” 

Johanna had heard this remark too often to be sensitive to it. 

“ When it comes to serious * chances,’ as you call them, no 
one will be more pleased for Ephie or more interested than I. 
But this is something different. You see that yourself, mother, 
I am sure. These young men who come about the house are so 
foolish, and immature, and they have such different ideas of 
things from ourselves. They think so ... so ” — Johanna 
hesitated for a word — “ so laxly on earnest subjects. And it is 
telling on Ephie. — Look, for instance, at Mr. Dove! I don’t 
want to say anything against him, in particular. He is really 


MAURICE GUEST 


232 

more serious than the rest. But for some time now, he has 
been making himself ridiculous,” — Johanna had blushed for 
Dove on the occasion of his last visit. “ No one could be more 
in earnest than he is; but Ephie only makes fun of him, in a 
heartless way. She won’t see what a grave matter it is to him.” 

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, not at all displeased. “Young people 
will be young people. You can’t put old heads on young 
shoulders, Joan, or shut them up in separate houses. Ephie is 
an extremely pretty girl, and it will be the same wherever we 
go. — As for young Dove, he knows well enough that nothing 
can come of it, and if he chooses to continue his attentions, 
why, he must take the consequences — that’s all. Absurd! — a 
boy and girl flirtation, and to make so much of it ! A mountain 
of a molehill, as usual. And half the time, you only imagine 
things, and don’t see what is going on under your very nose. 
Anyone but you, I’m sure, would find more to object to in the 
way young Guest behaves than Dove.” 

“Maurice Guest?” said Johanna, and laid her hands with 
stocking and needle on the table. 

“Yes, Maurice Guest,” repeated Mrs. Cayhill, with compla- 
cent mockery. “ Do you think no one has eyes but yourself? — 
No, Joan, you’re not sharp enough. Just look at the way he 
went on last night ! Every one but you could see what was the 
matter with him. Mrs. Tully told me about it afterwards. 
Why, he never took his eyes off her.” 

“ Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken,” said Johanna earnestly, 
and was silent from sheer surprise. “ He has been here so sel- 
dom of late,” she added after a pause, thinking aloud. 

“ Just for that very reason,” replied Mrs. Cayhill, with the 
same air of wisdom. “ A nice-minded young man stays away, 
if he sees that his feelings are not returned, or if he has no 
position to offer. — And another thing I’ll tell you, Joan, though 
you do think yourself so clever. You don’t need to worry if 
Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimes just now. At her age, it’s 
only to be expected. You know very well what I mean. All 
girls go through the same thing. You did yourself.” 

After this, she took up her book again, having, she knew, 
successfully silenced her daughter, who, on matters of this 
nature, was extremely sensitive. 

Johanna went methodically on with her darning; but the new 
idea which her mother had dropped into her mind, took root 
and grew. Strange that it had not occurred to her before! 
Dove’s state of mind had been patent from the first; but she 


MAURICE GUEST 


233 


had had no suspicions of Maurice Guest. His manner with 
Ephie had hitherto been that of a brother: he had never behaved 
like the rest. Yet, when she looked back on his visit of the 
previous evening, she could not but be struck by the strange- 
ness of his demeanour: his distracted silence, his efforts to 
speak to Ephie alone, and the expression with which he had 
watched her. And Ephie? — what of her? Now that Johanna 
thought of it, a change had also come over Ephie’s mode of 
treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early days had 
given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, 
had so pained her sister. What had brought about this change ? 
Was it pique? Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged 
absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to conceal it from 
him ? 

Johanna gathered up her work to go to her own room and 
think the matter out in private. In the passage, she ran into 
the arms of Mrs. Tully, whom she disliked; for, ever since com- 
ing to the Pension , this lady had carried on a kind of cult with 
Ephie, which was distasteful in the extreme to Johanna. 

“Oh, Miss Cayhill!” she now exclaimed. “I was just 
groping my way — it is indeed groping, is it not? — to your sit- 
ting-room. Where is your sister? I want so much to ask her 
if she will have tea with me this afternoon. I am expecting a 
few friends, and should be so glad if she would join us.” 

“ Ephie is practising, Mrs. Tully,” said Johanna in her cool- 
est tone. “ And I cannot have her disturbed.” 

“ She is so very, very diligent,” said Mrs. Tully with en- 
thusiasm. “ I always remark to myself on hearing her, how 
very idle a life like mine is in comparison. I am able to do so 
little; just a mere trifle here and there, a little atom of good, 
one might say. I have no talents. — And you, too, dear Miss 
Cayhill. So studious, so clever! I hear of you on every side,” 
and, letting her eyes rest on Johanna’s head, she wondered why 
the girl wore her hair so unbecomingly. 

Johanna did not respond. 

“ If only you would let your hair grow, it would make such 
a difference to your appearance,” said Mrs. Tully suddenly, 
with disconcerting outspokenness. 

Johanna drew herself up. 

“ Thanks,” she said. “ I have always worn my hair like 
this, and at my age, have no intention of altering it,” and 
leaving Mrs. Tully protesting vehemently at such false modesty, 
she went past her, into her own room, and shut the door. 


234 


MAURICE GUEST 


She sat down by the window to sew. But her hands soon 
fell to her lap, and with her eyes on the backs of the neigh- 
bouring houses, she continued her interrupted reflections. First, 
though, she threw a quick, sarcastic side-glance on her mother 
and herself. As so often before, when she had wanted to pin 
her mother’s attention to a subject, the centre of interest had 
shifted in spite of her efforts, and they had ended far from where 
they had begun: further, she, Johanna, had a way, when it 
came to the point, not of asking advice or of faithfully discuss- 
ing a question, but of emphatically giving her opinion, or of 
stating what she considered to be the facts of the case. 

From an odd mixture of experience and self-distrust, Johanna 
had, however, acquired a certain faith in her mother’s opinions — 
these blind, instinctive hits and guesses, which often proved 
right where Johanna’s carefully drawn conclusions failed. Here, 
once more, her mother’s idea had broken in upon her like a flash 
of light, even though she could not immediately bring herself 
to accept it. Maurice and Ephie! She could not reconcile the 
one with the other. Yet what if the child were fretting? What 
if he did not care? A pang shot through her at the thought 
that any outsider should have the power to make Ephie suffer. 
Oh, she would make him care! — she would talk to him as he 
had never been talked to in his life before. 

The sisters’ rooms were connected by a door; and, gradually, 
in spite of her preoccupation, Johanna could not but become 
aware how brokenly Ephie was practising. Coaxing, encour- 
agement, and sometimes even severity, were all, it is true, neces- 
sary to pilot Ephie through the two hours that were her daily 
task; but as idle as to-day, she had never been. What could 
she be doing? Johanna listened intently, but not a sound 
came from the room ; and impelled by a curiosity to observe her 
sister in a new light, she rose and opened the door. 

Ephie was standing with her back to it, staring out of the 
window, and supporting herself on the table by her violin, which 
she held by the neck. At Johanna’s entrance, she started, grew 
very red, and hastily raised the instrument to her shoulder. 

“ What are you doing, Ephie? You are wasting a great deal 
of time,” said Johanna in the tone of mild reproof that came 
natural to her, in speaking to her little sister. “ Is anything the 
matter to-day? If you don’t practice better than this, you won’t 
have the etude ready by Friday, and Herr Becker will make 
you take it again — for the third time.” 

“ He can if he likes. I guess I don’t care,” said Ephie non- 


MAURICE GUEST 


235 

chalantly, and, seizing the opportunity offered for a break, she 
sat down, and laid bow and fiddle on the table. 

“ Have you remembered everything he pointed out to you at 
your last lesson? ” asked Johanna, going over to the music-stand, 
and peering at the pages with her shortsighted eyes. “ Let me 
see — what was it now ? Something about this double-stopping 
here, and the fingering in this position.” 

Ephie laughed. “ Old Joan, what do you know about it? ” 

“ Not much, dear, I admit,” said Johanna pleasantly. “ But 
try and master it, like a good girl. So you can get rid of it, 
and go on to something else.” 

Ephie sat back, clasped her hands behind her head, and gave 
a long sigh. “ Yes, to the next one,” she said. “ Oh, if you 
only knew how sick I am of them, Joan! The next won’t be 
a bit better than this. They are all alike — a whole book of 
them.” 

Johanna looked down at the little figure with the plump, 
white arms, and discontented expression; and she tried to find 
in the childish face something she had previously not seen there. 

“Are you tired of studying, Ephie?” she asked. “Would 
you like to leave off, and go away ? ” 

“ Go away from Leipzig ? Where to ? ” Ephie did not un- 
clasp her hands, but her eyes grew vigilant. 

“ Oh, there are plenty of other places, child. Dresden — or 
Weimar — or Stuttgart — where you could take lessons just as 
well. Or if you are tired of studying altogether, there is no 
need for you to go on with it. We can return home, any day. 
Sometimes, I think it would be better if we did. You have not 
been yourself lately, dear. I don’t think you are very well.” 

“ I not myself? — not well? What rubbish you talk, Joan! I 
am quite well, and wish you wouldn’t tease me. I guess you 
want to go away yourself. You are tired of being here. But 
nothing shall induce me to go. I love old Leipzig. And 
I still have heaps to learn before I leave off studying. I don’t 
even know whether I shall be ready by spring. It all depends. — 
And now, Joan, go away.” She took up her violin and put it on 
her shoulder. “ Now it’s you who are wasting time. How can 
I practise when you stand there talking ? ” 

Johanna was silent. But after this, she did not venture to 
mention Maurice’s name ; and she had turned to leave the room 
when she remembered her meeting with Mrs. Tully. 

“ I would rather you did not go to tea, Ephie,” she ended, 
and then regretted having said it. 


236 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ That’s another of your silly prejudices, Joan. I want to 
know why you feel so about Mrs. Tully. I think she’s lovely. 
Not that I’d have gone anyway. I promised Maurice to go 
for a walk with him at five. I know what her ‘ few friends ’ 
means, too — just Boehmer, and she asks me along so people 
will think he comes to see me, and not her. He sits there, 
and twirls his moustache, and makes eyes at her, and she 
makes them back. I’m only for show. No, I shouldn’t have 
gone. I can’t bear Boehmer. He’s such a goat.” 

“ You didn’t think that as long as he came to see us,” expostu- 
lated Johanna. 

“ No, of course not. But so he only comes to see her, I do. 
— And sometimes, Joan, why it’s just embarrassing. The last 
afternoon, why, he had a headache or something, and she made 
him lie on the sofa, with a rug over him, so she could bathe his 
head with eau-de-cologne. I guess she’s going to marry him. 
And I’m not the only one. The other day I heard Frau Walter 
and Frau von Baerle talking in the dining-room after dinner, 
and they said the little English widow was very heiratslustig ” 

“ Ephie, I don’t like to hear you repeat such foolish gossip,” 
said Johanna in real distress. “ And if you can understand and 
remember a word like that, you might really take more pains 
with your German. It is not impossible for you to learn, you 
see.” 

“ Joan the preacher, and Joan the teacher, and Joan the wise 
old bird,” sang Ephie, and laughed. “ I think Mrs. Tully is 
real kind. She’s going to show me a new way to do my hair. 
This style is quite out in London, she says.” 

“ Don’t let her touch your hair. It couldn’t be better than 
it is,” said Johanna quickly. But Ephie turned her head this 
way and that, and considered herself in the looking-glass. 

Now that she knew Maurice was expected that afternoon, 
Johanna awaited his arrival with impatience. Meanwhile, she 
believed she was not wrong in thinking Ephie unusually excited. 
At dinner, where, as always, the elderly boarders made a great 
fuss over her, her laughter was so loud as to grate on Johanna’s 
ear; but afterwards, in their own sitting-room, a trifle suf- 
ficed to put her out of temper. A new hat had been sent home, 
a hat which Johanna had not yet seen. Now that it had come, 
Ephie was not sure whether she liked it or not ; and all the cries 
of admiration her mother and Mrs. Tully uttered, when she 
put it on, were necessary to reassure her. Johanna was silent, 
and this unspoken disapproval irritated Ephie. 


MAURICE GUEST 


237 

“Why don’t you say something, Joan?” she cried crossly. 
“ I suppose you think it’s homely? ” 

“ Frankly, I don’t care for it much, dear. To my mind, it’s 
overtrimmed.” 

This was so precisely Ephie’s own feeling that she was more 
annoyed than ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, 
countrified tastes; and, in spite of her mother’s comforting as- 
surances, retired in a pet to her own room. 

That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, 
who for some time had considered Ephie fondly, said : “ I can’t 
understand you thinking she isn’t well, Joan. I never saw her 
look better.” 

Ephie went crimson. “ Now what has Joan been saying 
about me?” she asked angrily. 

Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa. 

“ I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I 
didn’t think you were looking well.” 

“ Just fancy,” said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, 
“ she was saying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some 
strange place. Even back home to America. You don’t want 
to go away, darling, do you ? ” 

“ No, really, Joan is too bad,” cried Ephie, with a voice in 
which tears and exasperation struggled for the mastery. “ She 
always has some new fad in her head. She can’t leave us alone 
— never! Let her go away, so she wants to. I won’t. I’m 
happy here. I love being here. Even if you both go away, I 
shall stop.” 

She got up from the table, and went to a window, where 
she stood biting her lips, and paying small attention to her 
mother’s elaborate protests that she, too, had no intention of 
being moved. 

Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could 
have wept: not only at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which 
was beginning to show more and more clearly in everything 
Ephie said. But was no one but herself awake to the change 
that was taking place in the child, day by day? She would 
write to her father, without delay, and make him insist on 
their returning to America. 

From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not 
take her eyes off him; and, under her scrutiny, the young man 
soon grew nervous. He sat and fidgeted, and found nothing to 
say. 

Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go 


MAURICE GUEST 


238 

out; it looked like rain. Johanna refrained from interfering; 
but Maurice was most persistent: he begged Ephie not to dis- 
appoint him, and, when this failed, said angrily that she had 
no business to bring him there for such capricious whims. This 
treatment cowed Ephie ; and she went at once to put on her hat 
and jacket. 

“ He wants to speak to her ; and she knows it ; and is trying 
to avoid it,” said Johanna to herself; and her heart beat fast 
for both of them. But she was alone with Maurice; she must 
not lose the chance of sounding him a little. 

“Where do you think of going for a walk?” she asked, 
and her voice had an odd tone to her ears. 

“Where? Oh, to the Rosental — or the Scheibenholz — or 
along the river. Anywhere. I don’t know.” 

She coughed. “ Have you noticed anything strange about 
Ephie lately? She is not herself. I’m afraid she is not well.” 

He had noticed nothing. But he did not face Johanna; and 
he held the photograph he was looking at upside down. 

She leaned out of the window to watch them walk along 
the street. At this moment, she was fully convinced of the 
correctness of her mother’s assumption; and by the thought 
of what might take place within the next hour, she was much 
disturbed. During the rest of the afternoon, she found it 
impossible to settle to anything; and she wandered from one 
room to another, unable even to read. But it struck six, 
seven, eight o’clock ; it was supper-time ; and still Ephie had not 
come home. Mrs. Cayhill grew anxious, too, and Johanna 
strained her eyes, watching the dark street. At nine and 
at ten, she was pacing the room, and at eleven, after a mes- 
senger had been sent to Maurice’s lodging and had found no 
one there, she buttoned on her rain-cloak, to accompany one 
of the servants to the police-station. 

“ Why did I let her go ? — Oh, why did I let her go ! ” 


IV 


Maurice and Ephie walked along the Lessingstrasse without 
speaking — it was a dull, mild day, threatening to rain, as it had 
rained the whole of the preceding night. But Ephie was not 
accustomed to be silent; she found the stillness disconcerting, 
and before they had gone far, shot a furtive look at her com- 
panion. She did not intend him to see it; but he did, and 
turned to her. He cleared his throat, and seemed about to 
speak, then changed his mind. Something in his face, as she 
observed it more nearly, made Ephie change colour and give 
an awkward laugh. 

“ I asked you before how you liked my hat,” she said, with 
another attempt at the airiness which, to-day, she could not 
command. “And you didn’t say. I guess you haven’t looked 
at it. You’re in such a hurry.” 

Maurice turned his head ; but he did not see the hat. In- 
stead, he mentally answered a question Louise had put to him 
the day before, and which he had then not known how to 
meet. Yes, Ephie was pretty, radiantly pretty, with the fresh, 
unsullied charm of a flower just blown. 

“Joan was so stupid about it,” she went on at random; 
her face still wore its uncertain smile. “ She said it was 
overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn’t become me. As if 
she ever wore anything that suited her! But Joan is an old 
maid. She hasn’t a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, 
why I just don’t believe you know one hat from another. 
Men are so stupid.” 

Again they went forward in silence. 

“ You are tiresome to-day,” she said at length, and looked 
at him with a touch of defiance, as a schoolgirl looks at the 
master with whom she ventures to remonstrate. 

“ Yes, I’m a dull companion.” 

“ Knowing it doesn’t make it any better.” 

But she was not really cross; all other feelings were swal- 
lowed up by the uneasiness she felt at his manner of treating 
her. 

“Where are we going?” she suddenly demanded of "him, 
239 


240 


MAURICE GUEST 


with a little quick upward note in her voice. “ This is not 
the way to the Scheibenholz " 

“ No.” He had been waiting for the question. “ Ephie,” 
— he cleared his throat anew. “ I am taking you to see a friend 
— of mine.” 

“ Is that what you brought me out for? Then you didn’t 
want to speak to me, as you said? Then we’re not going for 
a walk? ” 

“Afterwards, perhaps. It’s like this. Some one I know 
has been very ill. Now that she is getting better, she needs 
rousing and cheering up, and that kind of thing; and I said 
I would bring you to call on her. She knows you by sight — 
and would like to know you personally,” he added, with a lame 
effort at explanation. 

“Is that so?” said Ephie with sudden indifference; and 
her heart, which had begun to thump at the mention of a 
friend, quieted down at once. In fancy, she saw an elderly 
lady with shawls and a footstool, who had been attracted by 
her fresh young face; the same thing had happened to her 
before. 

Now, however, that she knew the object of their walk, 
she was greatly relieved, as if a near danger had been averted; 
but she had not taken many steps forward before she was tell- 
ing herself that another hope was gone. The only thing to 
do was to take the matter into her own hands; it was now 
or never; and simply a question of courage. 

“ Maurice, say, do many people go away from here in the 
fall ? — leave the Con., I would say ? ” she asked abruptly. “ I 
mean is this a time more people leave than in spring?” 

Maurice started ; he had been lost in his own thoughts, 
which all centred round this meeting he had weakly agreed 
to arrange. Again and again he had tried to imagine how 
it would fall out. But he did not know Louise well enough 
to foresee how she would act; and the nearer the time came, 
the stronger grew his presentiment of trouble. His chief re- 
maining hope was that there would be no open speaking, that 
Schilsky’s name would not be mentioned ; and plump into the 
midst of this hope fell Ephie’s question. He turned on her; 
she coloured furiously, and walked into a pool of water; and, 
at this moment, everything was as clear to Maurice as though 
she had said: “ Where is he? Why has he gone? ” 

“ Why do you ask ? ” he queried with unconscious sharpness. 
“ No, Easter is the general time for leaving. But people who 


MAURICE GUEST 


241 


play in the Priifungen then, sometimes stay for the summer 
term. Why do you ask?” 

“ Gracious, Maurice, how tiresome you are ! Must one 
always say why? I only wanted to know. I missed people 
I used to see about, that’s all.” 

“ Yes, a number have not come back.” 

He was so occupied with what they were saying that he, 
in his turn, stepped into a puddle, splashing the water up over 
her shoe. Ephie was extremely annoyed. 

“ Look ! — look what you’ve done ! ” she cried, showing him 
her spikey little shoe. “ Why don’t you look where you’re 
going? How clumsy you are! ” and, in a sudden burst of ill- 
humour: “ I don’t know why you’re bringing me here. It’s 
a horrid part of the city anyway. I didn’t have any desire to 
come. I guess I’ll turn back and go home.” 

“ We’re almost there now.” 

“ I don’t care. I don’t want to go.” 

“ But you shall, all the same. What’s the matter with you 
to-day that you don’t know your own mind for two minutes 
together ? ” 

“ You didn’t inquire if I wanted to come. You’re just 
horrid, Maurice.” 

“And you’re a capricious child.” 

He quickened his pace* afraid she might still escape him; 
and Ephie had hard work to keep up with him. As she trotted 
along, a few steps behind, there arose in her a strong feeling 
of resentment against Maurice, which was all the stronger 
because she suspected that she was on the brink of hearing 
her worst suspicions confirmed. But she could not afford to 
yield to the feeling, when the last chance she had of getting 
definite information was passing from her. Knitting both 
hands firmly inside her muff, she asked, with an earnestness 
which, to one who knew, was fatally tale-telling: “ Did any- 
one you were acquainted with leave, Maurice?” 

“ Yes,” said the young man at her side, with brusque de- 
termination. He remained untouched by the tone of appeal 
in which Ephie put the question ; for he himself suffered under 
her continued hedging. “ Yes,” he said, “ some one did, and 
that was a man called Schilsky — a tall, red-haired fellow, a 
violinist. But he has only just gone. He came back after 
the vacation to settle his affairs, and say good-bye to his 
friends. Is there anything else you want to know ? ” 

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his 


242 


MAURICE GUEST 


mouth. After all, Ephie was such a child. He could not 
see her face, which was hidden by the brim of the big hat, 
but there was something pathetic in the line of her chin, and 
the droop of her arms and shoulders. She seemed to shrink 
under his words — to grow smaller. As he stood aside to let 
her pass before him, through the house-door in the Briider - 
strasse, he had a quick revulsion of feeling. Instead of being 
rough and cruel to her, he should have tried to win her con- 
fidence with brotherly kindness. But he had had room in his 
mind for nothing but the meeting with Louise, and now there 
was no more time; they were going up the stairs. All he 
could do was to say gently: “ I ought to tell you, Ephie, that 
the person we are going to see has been very, very ill — and 
needs treating with the utmost consideration. I rely on your 
tact and good-feeling. ,, 

But Ephie did not reply; the colour had left her face, and 
for once, the short upper-lip closed firmly on the lower one. 
For some minutes amazed anger with Maurice was all she 
felt. Then, however, came the knowledge of what his words 
meant: he knew — Maurice knew; he had seen through her 
fictions; he would tell on her; there would be dreadful 
scenes with Joan; there would be reproaches and recrimina- 
tions; she would be locked up, or taken away. As for what 
lay beyond, his assertion that Schilsky had been there — had 
been and gone, without a word to her — that was a sickening 
possibility, which, at present, her mind could not grasp. She 
grew dizzy under these blows that rained down on her, one 
after the other. And meanwhile, she had to keep up appear- 
ances, to go on as though nothing had happened, when it seemed 
impossible even to drag herself to the top of the winding flight 
of stairs. She held her head down ; there was a peculiar click- 
ing in her throat, which she could not master; she felt at every 
step as if she would have to burst out crying. 

At the glass of the door, and at the wizened old face that 
appeared behind it, she looked with unseeing eyes; and she 
followed Maurice mechanically along the passage to a door 
at the end. 

In his agitation the young man forgot to knock; and as 
they entered, a figure sprang up from the sofa-corner, and made 
a few impulsive steps towards them. 

Maurice went over to Louise and took her hand. 

“ I’ve brought her,” he said in a low tone, and with a 
kind of appeal in voice and eyes, which he was not himself 


MAURICE GUEST 


243 

aware of. Louise answered the look, and went on looking at 
him, as if she were fearful of letting her eyes stray. Both 
turned at an exclamation from Ephie. She was still standing 
where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but her 
face was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the door- 
handle. 

“Ephie!” said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she 
would turn the handle, and, going over to her, took her by 
the arm. 

“ Say, Maurice, I’m going home,” she said under her breath. 
“I can’t stop here. Oh, why did you bring me?” 

“ Ssh! — be a good girl, Ephie,” he replied as though speak- 
ing to a child. “ Come with me.” 

An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie’s dread. “ I can’t. 
I don’t know her name,” she whispered. But she let him draw 
her forward to where Louise was standing; and she held out 
her hand. 

“ Miss ? ” she said in a small voice, and waited for 

the name to be filled in. 

Louise had watched them whispering, with a stony face, 
but, at Ephie’s gesture, life came into it. Her eyes opened 
wide; and drawing back from the girl’s outstretched hand, 
yet without seeming to see it, she turned with a hasty move- 
ment, and went over to the window, where she stood with 
her back to them. 

This was the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and 
hiding her face in her hands, burst into the tears she had 
hitherto restrained. Her previous trouble was increased a 
hundredfold. For she had recognised Louise at once; she felt 
that she was in a trap; and the person who had entrapped her 
was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, 
she sobbed as though her heart would break. 

“ Don’t cry, dear, don’t cry,” said the young man. “ It’s 
all right.” But his thoughts were with Louise. He was ap- 
prehensive of what she might do next. 

As if in answer to his fear, she crossed the room. 

“Ask her to take her hands down. I want to see her face.” 

Maurice bent over Ephie, and touched her shoulder. 

“ Ephie, dear, do you hear? Look up, like a good girl, and 
speak to Miss Dufrayer.” 

But Ephie shook off his hand. 

Over her bowed head, their eyes met; and the look Louise 
gave the young man was cold and questioning. He shrugged 


MAURICE GUEST 


244 

his shoulders: he could do nothing; and retreating behind the 
writing-table, he left the two girls to themselves. 

“ Stand up, please,” said Louise in an unfriendly voice ; and 
as Ephie did not obey, she made a movement to take her by 
the wrists. 

“No, no! — don’t touch me,” cried Ephie, and rose in spite 
of herself. “What right have you to speak to me like this?” 

She could say no more, for, with a quick, unforeseen move- 
ment, Louise took the young girl’s face in both hands, and 
turned it up. And after her first instinctive effort to draw 
back, Ephie kept still, like a fascinated rabbit, her eyes fixed 
on the dark face that looked down at her. 

Seconds passed into minutes; and the minutes seemed hours. 
Maurice watched, on the alert to intervene, if necfessary. 

At the entrance of her visitors, Louise had been unable to 
see distinctly, so stupefied was she by the thought that the 
person on whom her thoughts had run, with a kind of madness, 
for more than forty-eight hours, was actually in the room 
beside her — it was just as though a nightmare phantom had 
taken bodily form. And then, too, though she had spent each 
of these hours in picturing to herself what this girl would be 
like, the reality was so opposed to her imagining that, at first, 
she could not reconcile the differences. 

Now she forced herself to see every line of the face. Nothing 
escaped her. She saw how loosened tendrils of hair on neck 
and forehead became little curls; saw the finely marked brows, 
and the dark blue veins at the temples; the pink and white 
colouring of the cheeks; the small nose, modelled as if in wax; 
the fascinating baby mouth, with its short upper-lip. Like 
most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness is past, 
the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, 
as something belonging to a different race from herself. And 
this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie’s face, 
she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she 
knew better than her own ; she saw with his eyes, felt with 
his senses. She pictured Ephie’s face, arch and smiling, lifted 
to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had 
not been able to help what had happened: this was the pretti- 
ness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look 
back at, in the street — something fair and round, adorably small 
and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, 
and was childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for 
her wilful mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was 


MAURICE GUEST 


245 

not his type, and she knew it. But to have known it vaguely, 
when it did not matter, and to know it at a moment like the 
present, were two different things. 

In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but 
her insatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now 
free, did not stir, but remained standing, with her face raised, 
in a silly fascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves 
of cheeks and chin, and the soft white throat, passed to the 
rounded, drooping shoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish 
figure, embracing the whole body in their devouring gaze. 
Ephie went hot and cold beneath them ; she felt as if her clothes 
were being stripped from her, and she left standing naked. 
Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it in her own 
way. His — all his! He was not the mortal — 6he knew it 
only too well — to have this flower within his reach, and not 
clutch at it, instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It 
would not have been in nature for him to do otherwise than 
take, greedily, without reflection. At the thought of it, a 
spasm of jealousy caught her by the throat; her hanging hands 
trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness, to spoil these lips 
that had been kissed by his. 

Maurice was at her side. “ Don’t hurt her,” he said, and 
did not know how the words came to his lips. 

The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out 
of her face; she was tired and apathetic. 

“Hurt her?” she repeated faintly. “No, don’t be afraid. 
I shall not hurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my 
strength was gone, I couldn’t hurt her as she has hurt me.” 

“ Hush ! Don’t say such things.” 

“ I ? I hurt you ? ” said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. 
“ How could I ? I don’t even know you.” 

“No, you don’t know me; and yet you have done me the 
cruellest wrong.” 

“Oh, no, no,” sobbed Ephie. “No, indeed!” 

“ He was all I had — all I cared for. And you plotted, and 
planned, and stole him from me — with your silly baby face.” 

“ It’s not true,” wept Ephie. “ How could I ? I didn’t 
know anything about you. He ... he never spoke of you.” 

Louise laughed. “ Oh, I can believe that! And you thought, 
didn’t you, you poor little fool, that he only cared for you? 
That was why my name was never mentioned. He didn’t 
need to scheme, and contrive, and lie, lie abominably, for fear 
I should come to hear what he was doing ! ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


246 

“No, indeed,” sobbed Ephie. “Never! And you’ve no 
right to say such things of him.” 

“I no right?” Louise drew herself up. “No right to 
say what I like of him? Are you going to tell me what 
I shall say and what I shan’t of the man I loved? — yes, and 
who loved me, too, but in a way you couldn’t understand — 
you who think all you have to do is to smile your silly smile, 
and spoil another person’s life. You didn’t know, no, of 
course not! — didn’t know this was his room as well as mine. 
Look, his music is still lying on the piano; that’s the chair 
he sat in, not many days ago; here,” she took Ephie by 
the shoulder and drew her behind the screen, where a small 
door, papered like the wall, gave, direct from the stair-head, 
a second entrance to the room — “ here’s the door he came in 
at. — For he came as he liked, whenever he chose.” 

“ It’s not true ; it can’t be true,” said Ephie, and raised her 
tear-stained face defiantly. “We are engaged — since the sum- 
mer. He’s coming back to marry me soon.” 

“ He’s coming back to marry you ! ” echoed Louise in a 
blank voice. “ He’s coming back to marry you ! ” 

She moved a few steps away, and stood by the writing-table, 
looking dazed, as if she did not understand. Then she laughed. 

Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. “ I want to go home.” 

But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was 
watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued 
to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which 
made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching 
her, she tried to check herself, but without success. She wiped 
her lips, and pressed her handkerchief to them, then took the 
handkerchief between her teeth and bit it. She crossed to 
the window, and stood with her back to the others; but she 
could not stop laughing. She went behind the low, broad 
screen that divided the room, and sat down on the edge of the 
bed; but still she had to laugh on. She came out again into 
the other part of the room, and saw Maurice pale and con- 
cerned, and Ephie’s tears dried through pure fear; but the 
sight of these two made her laugh more violently than before. 
She held her face in her hands, and pressed her jaws together 
as though she would break them ; for they shook with a nervous 
convulsion. Her whole body began to shake, with the efforts 
she made at repression. 

Ephie cowered in her seat. “ Oh, Maurice, let us go. I’m 
so afraid,” she implored him. 


MAURICE GUEST 


247 


“ Don’t be frightened ! It’s all right.” But he was fol- 
lowing Louise about the room, entreating her to regain the 
mastery of herself. When he did happen to notice Ephie more 
closely, he said: “Go downstairs, and wait for me there. I’ll 
come soon.” 

Ephie did not need twice telling: she turned and fled. He 
heard the hall-door bang behind her. 

“ Do try to control yourself. Miss Dufrayer — Louise! 
Every one in the house will hear you.” 

But she only laughed the more. And now the merest trifles 
helped to increase the paroxysm — the way Maurice worked his 
hands, Ephie’s muff lying forgotten on a chair, the landlady’s 
inquisitive face peering in at the door. The laugh continued, 
though it had become a kind of cackle — a sound without tone. 
Maurice could bear it no longer. He went up to her and 
tried to take her hands. She repulsed him, but he was too 
strong for her. He took both her hands in his, and pressed 
her down on a chair. He was not clear himself what to do 
next; but, the moment he touched her, the laughter ceased. 
She gasped for breath; he thought she would choke, and let 
her hands go again. She pressed them to her throat; her 
breath came more and more quickly; her eyes closed; and fall- 
ing forward on her knees, she hid her face in the cushioned seat 
of the sofa. 

Then the tears came, and what tears ! In all his life, 
Maurice had never heard crying like this. He moved as far 
away from her as he could, stood at the window, staring out 
and biting his lips, while she sobbed, regardless of his presence, 
with the utter abandon of a child. Like a child, too, she 
wept rebelliously, unchastenedly, as he could not have believed 
it possible for a grown person to cry. Such grief as this, so 
absolute a despair, had nothing to do with reason or the rea- 
soning faculties; and the words were not invented that would 
be able to soothe it. 

But, little by little, a change came over her crying. The 
rebellion died out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, 
hopeless, without life. Her strength was almost gone. Now, 
however, there was another note of childishness in it, that of 
complete exhaustion, which it is so hard to hear. The tears 
rose to his own eyes; he would have liked to go to her, to 
lay his hand on her head, and treat her tenderly, to make her 
cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had 
he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all in- 


MAURICE GUEST 


248 

tensely passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, 
when the grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one over- 
ruling desire is the desire to be comforted, no matter who the 
comforter and what his means, so long as they are masterful 
and strong. 

She grew calmer; and soon she was only shaken at widening 
intervals by a sob. Then these, too, ceased, and Maurice held 
his breath. But as, after a considerable time had elapsed, she 
still lay without making sound or movement, he crossed the 
room to look at her. She was fast asleep, half sitting, half 
lying, with her head on the cushions, and the tears wet on 
her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her in a more 
comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her. 
Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped 
it round her; then slipped noiselessly from the room. 

It was past eight o’clock. 

***** 

Ephie ran down the stairs as if a spectre were at her heels, 
and even when in the street, did not venture to slacken her 
speed. Although the dusk was rapidly passing into dark, a 
good deal of notice was attracted by the sight of a well-dressed 
young girl running along, holding a handkerchief to her face, 
and every now and then emitting a loud sob. People stood 
and stared after her, and some little boys ran with her. Instead 
of dropping her pace when she saw this, Ephie grew confused, 
and ran more quickly than before. She had turned at random, 
on coming out of the house; and she was in a part of the 
town she did not know. In her eagerness to get away from 
people, she took any turn that offered ; and after a time she 
found that she had crossed the river, and was on what was 
almost a country road. A little further off, she knew, lay the 
woods; if once she were in their shelter, she would be safe; 
and, without stopping to consider that night was falling, she 
ran towards them at full speed. On the first seat she came 
to she sank breathless and exhausted. 

Her first sensation was one of relief at being alone. She 
unpinned and took off the big, heavy hat, and laid it on the 
seat beside her, in order to be more at her ease; and then she 
cried, heartily, and without precautions, enjoying to the full 
the luxury of being unwatched and unheard. Since tea- 
time, she seemed to have been fighting her tears, exercising 


MAURICE GUEST 


249 


a self-restraint that was new to her and very hard ; and not 
to-day alone — oh, no, for weeks past, she had been obliged to 
act a part. Not even in her bed at night had she been free 
to indulge her grief; for, if she cried then, it made her pale 
and heavy-eyed next day, and exposed her to Joan’s comments. 
And there were so many things to cry about: all the 
emotional excitement of the summer, with its ups and downs 
of hope and fear; the never-ceasing need of dissimulation; the 
gnawing uncertainty caused by Schilsky’s silence; the growing 
sense of blankness and disappointment; Joan’s suspicions; 
Maurice’s discovery; the knowledge that Schilsky had gone 
away without a word to her; and, worst of all, and most 
inexplicable, the terrible visit of the afternoon — at the re- 
membrance of the madwoman she had escaped from, Ephie’s 
tears flowed with renewed vigour. Her handkerchief was 
soaked and useless; she held her fur tippet across her eyes to 
receive the tears as they fell; and when this grew too wet, she 
raised the skirt of her dress to her face. Not a sound was to 
be heard but her sobbing; she was absolutely alone; and she 
wept on till those who cared for her, whose chief wish was 
to keep grief from her, would hardly have recognized in her 
the child they loved. 

How long she had been there she did not know, when she 
was startled to her feet by a loud rustling in the bushes 
behind her. Then, of a sudden, she became aware that it 
was pitch-dark, and that she was all by herself in the woods. 
She took to her heels, in a panic of fear, and did not stop 
running till the street-lamps came into sight. When she was 
under their friendly shine, and could see people walking on 
the other side of the river, she remembered that she had left 
her hat lying on the seat. At this fresh misfortune, she began 
to cry anew. But not for anything in the world would she 
have ventured back to fetch it. 

She crossed the Pleisse and came to a dark, quiet street, where 
few people were; and here she wandered up and down. It 
was late ; at home they would be sitting at supper now, exhaust- 
ing themselves in conjectures where she could be. Ephie was 
very hungry, and at the thought of the warmth and light of 
the supper-table, a lump rose in her throat. If it had 
been only her mother, she might have faced her — but Joan! 
Home in this plight, at this hour, hatless, and with swollen 
face, to meet Joan’s eyes and questions! — she shivered at the 
idea. Moreover, the whole Pension would get to know what 


250 MAURICE GUEST 

had happened to her; she would need to bear inquisitive looks 
and words; she would have to explain, or, still worse, to invent 
and tell stories again; and of what use were they now, when 
all was over? A feeling of lassitude overcame her — an ina- 
bility to begin fresh. All over: he would never put his arm 
round her again, never come towards her, careless and smiling, 
and call her his “ little, little girl.” 

She sobbed to herself as she walked. Everything was 
bleak, and black, and cheerless. She would perhaps die of 
the cold, and then all of them, Joan in particular, would 
be filled with remorse. She stood and looked at the inky water 
of the river between its stone walls. She had read of people 
drowning themselves; what if she went down the steps and 
threw herself in? — and she feebly fingered at the gate. But 
it was locked and chained; and at the idea of her warm, soft 
body touching the icy water; at the picture of herself lying 
drowned, with dank hair, or, like the Christian Martyr, float- 
ing away on the surface; at the thought of their grief, of him 
wringing his hands over her corpse, she was so moved that 
she wept aloud again, and amost ran to be out of temptation’s 
way. 

It had begun to drizzle. Oh, how tired she was! And 
she was obliged constantly to dodge impertinently staring men. 
In a long, wide street, she entered a door-way that was not 
quite so dark as the others, and sat down on the bottom step 
of the stairs. Here she must have dozed, for she was roused 
by angry voices on the floor above. It sounded like some one 
who was drunk; and she fled trembling back to the street. 

A neighbouring clock struck ten. At this time of night, she 
could not go home, even though she wished to. She was wan- 
dering the streets like any outcast, late at night, without a hat 
— and her condition of hatlessness she felt to be the chief stigma. 
But she was starving with hunger, and so tired that she could 
scarcely drag one foot after the other. Oh, what would they 
say if they knew what their poor little Ephie was enduring! 
Her mother — Joan — Maurice! 

Maurice! The thought of him came to her like a ray of 
light. It was to Maurice she would turn. He would be 
good to her, and help her; he had always been kind to her, till 
this afternoon. And he knew what had happened; it would 
not be necessary to explain. — Oh, Maurice, Maurice! 

She knew his address, if she could but find the street. A 
droschke passed, and she tried to hail it ; but she did not like to 


MAURICE GUEST 


251 


advance too far out of the shadow, on account of her bare 
head. Finally, plucking up courage, she inquired the way of 
a feather-hatted woman, who had eyed her with an inquisitive 
stare. 

It turned out that the Braustrasse was just round the 
corner; she had perhaps been in the street already, without 
knowing it; and now she found it, and the house, without dif- 
ficulty. The street-door was still open; or she would never 
have been bold enough to ring. 

The stair was poorly lighted, and full of unsavoury smells. 
In her agitation, Ephie rang on a wrong floor, and a strange 
man answered her timid inquiry. She climbed a flight 
higher, and rang again. There was a long and ominous pause, 
in which her heart beat fast ; if Maurice did not live here either, 
she would drop where she stood. She was about to ring a 
second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along 
the passage, the glass window was opened, and a woman’s face 
peered out at her. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said 
Frau Krause, divided between curiosity and indignation at 
having to rise from bed ; and she held the lamp above her head, 
in order to see Ephie better. But he was not at home, and, 
even if he were, at this hour of night . . . The heavy words 
shuffled along, giving the voracious eyes time to devour. 

At the thought that her request might be denied her, Ephie’s 
courage took its last leap. 

“ Why, I must see him. I have something important to tell 
him. Could I not wait ? ” she urged in her broken German, 
feeling unspeakably small and forlorn. And yielding to a 
desire to examine more nearly the bare, damp head and 
costly furs, Frau Krause allowed the girl to pass before her 
into Maurice’s room. 

She loitered as long as she could over lighting the lamp that 
stood on the table; and meanwhile threw repeated glances at 
Ephie, who, having given one look round the shabby room, 
sank into a corner of the sofa and hid her face: the coarse- 
browed woman, in petticoat and night-jacket, seemed to her 
capable of robbery or murder. And so Frau Krause unwill- 
ingly withdrew, to await further developments outside: the 
holy, smooth-faced Herr Guest was a deep one, after all. 

When Maurice entered, shortly before eleven, Ephie started 
up from a broken sleep. He came in pale and disturbed, for 
Frau Krause had met him in the passage with angry mutter- 
ings about a Frauenzimmer in his room; and his thoughts had 


252 


MAURICE GUEST 


at once leaped fearfully to Louise. When he saw Ephie, he 
uttered a loud exclamation of surprise. 

“ Good Lord, Ephie! What on earth are you doing here? ” 
She sprang at his hands, and caught her breath hysterically. 
“ Oh, Morry, you’ve come at last. Oh, I thought you would 
never come. Where have you been? Oh, Morry, help me — 
help me, or I shall die ! ” 

“Whatever is the matter? What are you doing here?” 

At his perturbed amazement, she burst into tears, still cling- 
ing fast to his hands. He led her back to the sofa, from which 
she had sprung. 

“ Hush, hush ! Don’t cry like that. What’s the matter, 
child? Tell me what it is — at once — and let me help you.” 

“ Oh, yes, Morry, help me, help me ! There’s no one else. 
I didn’t know where to go. Oh, what shall I do! ” 

Her own words sounded so pathetic that she sobbed piteously. 
Maurice stroked her hand, and waited for her to grow quieter. 
But now that she had laid the responsibility of herself on other 
shoulders, Ephie was quite unnerved: after the dark and fear- 
ful wanderings of the evening, to be beside some one who knew, 
who would take care of her, who would tell her what to do ! 

She sobbed and sobbed. Only with perseverance did Maurice 
draw from her, word by word, an account of where she had 
been that evening, broken by such cries as: “Oh, what shall 
I do! I can’t ever go home again — ever! . . . and I lost 
my hat. Oh, Morry, Morry! And I didn’t know he had 
gone away — and it wasn’t true what I said, that he was com- 
ing back to marry me soon. I only said it to spite her, because 
she said such dreadful things to me. But we were engaged, all 
the same; he said he would come to New York to marry me. 
And now ... oh, dear, oh, Morry! ...” 

“ Then he really promised to marry you, did he ? ” 

“ Yes, oh, yes. Everything was fixed. The last day I was 
there,” she wept. “But I didn’t know he was going away; 
he never said a word about it. Oh, what shall I do ! Go after 
him, and bring him back, Morry. He must come back. He 
can’t leave me like this, he can’t — oh, no, indeed ! ” 

“ You don’t mean to say you went to see him, Ephie? — alone? 
— at his room?” queried Maurice slowly, and he did not 
know how sternly. “When? How often? Tell me every- 
thing. This is no time for fibbing.” 

But he could make little of Ephie’s sobbed and hazy version 
of the story; she herself could not remember clearly now; the 


MAURICE GUEST 


253 


impressions of the last few hours had been so intense as to 
obliterate much of what had gone before. “ I thought I would 
drown myself . . . but the water was so black. Oh, why 
did you take me to that dreadful woman? Did you hear 
what she said ? It wasn’t true, was it ? Oh, it can’t be ! ” 

“ It was quite true, Ephie. What he told you wasn’t true. 
He never really cared for anyone but her. They were — were 
engaged for years.” 

At this, she wept so heart-rendingly that he was afraid Frau 
Krause would come in and interfere. 

“ You must control yourself. Crying won’t alter things 
now. If you had been frank and candid with us, it would 
never have happened.” This was the only reproach he could 
make her; what came after was Johanna’s business, not his. 
“And now I’m going to take you home. It’s nearly twelve 
o’clock. Think of the state your mother and sister will be in 
about you.” 

But at the mention of Johanna, Ephie flung herself on the 
sofa again and beat the cushions with her hands. 

“ Not Joan, not Joan ! ” she wailed. “No, I won’t go home. 
What will she say to me? Oh, I am so frightened! She’ll 
kill me, I know she will.” And at Maurice’s confident as- 
surance that Johanna would have nothing but love and sym- 
pathy for her, she shook her head. “ I know Joan. She’ll 
never forgive me. Morry, let me stay with you. You’ve al- 
ways been kind to me. Oh, don’t send me away!” 

“ Don’t be a silly child, Ephie. You know yourself you 
can’t stay here.” 

But he gave up urging her, coaxed her to lie down, and sat 
beside her, stroking her hair. As he said no more, she gradually 
ceased to sob, and in what seemed to the young man an incredi- 
bly short time, he heard from her breathing that she was asleep. 
He covered her up, and stood a sheet of music before the 
lamp, to shade her eyes. In the passage he ran up against 
Frau Krause, whom he charged to prevent Ephie in the event 
of her attempting to leave the house. 

Buttoning up his coat-collar, he hastened through the mist- 
like rain to fetch Johanna. 

There was a light in every window of the Pension in the 
Lessingstrasse ; the street-door and both doors of the flat stood 
open. As he mounted the stairs a confused sound of voices 
struck his ear; and when he entered the passage, he heard Mrs. 
Cayhill crying noisily. Johanna came out to him at once; 


254 


MAURICE GUEST 


she was in hat and cloak. She listened stonily to his statement 
that Ephie was safe at his lodgings, and put no questions; but, 
on her returning to the sitting-room, Mrs. Cayhill’s sobs stopped 
abruptly, and several women spoke at once. 

Johanna preserved her uncompromising attitude as they 
walked the midnight streets. But as Maurice made no mien to 
explain matters further, she so far conquered her aversion as 
to ask: “ What have you done to her? ” 

The young man’s consternation at this view of the case was 
so evident that even she felt the need of wording her question 
differently. 

“Answer me. What is Ephie doing at your rooms? ” 

Maurice cleared his throat. “ It’s a long and unpleasant 
story, Miss Cayhill. And I’m afraid I must tell it from the 
beginning. — Y ou didn’t suspect, I fear, that . . . well, that 
Ephie had a fancy for some one here? ” 

At these words, which were very different from those she 
had expected, Johanna eyed him in astonishment. 

“ A fancy ! ” she repeated incredulously. “ Whaf do you 
mean ? ” 

“ Even more — an infatuation,” said Maurice with deliberation. 
“And for some one I daresay you have never even heard of — a 
. . . a man here, a violinist, called Schilsky.” 

The elaborate fabric she had that day reared, fell together 
about Johanna’s ears. She stared at Maurice as if she doubted 
his sanity; and she continued to listen, with the same icy air 
of disbelief, to his stammered and ineffectual narrative, until 
he said that he believed “ it ” had been “ going on since summer.” 

At this Johanna laughed aloud. “ That is quite impossible,” 
she said. “ I knew everything Ephie did, and everywhere she 
went.” 

“ She met him nearly every day. They exchanged letters, 
and — -” 

“ It is impossible,” repeated Johanna with vehemence, but 
less surely. 

“ — * — and a sort of engagement seems to have existed be- 
tween them.” 

“And you knew this and never said a word to me? ” 

“ I didn’t know — not till to-night. I only suspected some- 
thing — once . . . long ago. And I couldn’t — I mean — one 
can’t say a thing like that without being quite sure — ♦ — ” 

But here he broke down, conscious, as never before, of the 
negligence he had been guilty of towards Ephie. And Johanna 


MAURICE GUEST 255 

was not likely to spare him: there was, indeed, a bitter an- 
tagonism to his half-hearted conduct in the tone in which she 
said: “I stood to Ephie in a mother’s place. You might 
have warned me — oh, you might, indeed ! ” 

They walked on in silence — a hard, resentful silence. Then 
Johanna put the question he was expecting to hear. 

“And what has all this to do with to-night?” 

Maurice took up the thread of his narrative again, telling 
how Ephie had waited vainly for news since returning from 
Switzerland, and how she had only learnt that afternoon that 
Schilsky had been in Leipzig, and had gone away again, without 
seeing her, or letting her know that he did not intend to return. 

“And how did she hear it ? ” 

“At a friend’s house.” 

“What friend?” 

“ A friend of mine, a No ; I had better be frank with 

you: the girl this fellow was engaged to for a year or more.” 

“And Ephie did not know that? ” 

He shook his head. 

“ But you knew, and yet took her there? ” 

It was a hopeless job to try to exonerate himself. “Yes, 
there were reasons — -I couldn’t help it, in fact. But I’m afraid 
I should not be able to make you understand.” 

“No, never! ” retorted Johanna, and squared her shoulders. 

But there was more to be said — she had worse to learn — 
before Ephie was handed over to her care. 

“And Ephie has been very foolish,” he began anew, without 
looking at her. “ It seems — from what she has told me to- 
night — that she has been to see this man . . . been at his 
rooms . . . more than once.” 

At first, he was certain, Johanna did not grasp the meaning 
of what he said ; she turned a blank face curiously to him. But, a 
moment later, she gave a low cry, and hardly able to form 
the words for excitement, asked : “ Who . . . what . . . what 
kind of a man was he — this . . . Schilsky?” 

“ Rotten,” said Maurice; and she did not press him further. 
He heard her breath coming quickly, and saw the kind of 
stiffening that went through her body; but she kept silence, 
and did not speak again till they were almost at his 
house-door. Then she said, in a voice that was hoarse with 
feeling: “ It has been all my fault. I did not take proper 
care of her. I was blind and foolish. And I shall never be 
able to forgive myself for it — never. But that Ephie — my little 


MAURICE GUEST 


256 

Ephie — the child I — that Ephie could . . . could do a thing 
like this . . . ” Her voice tailed off in a sob. 

Maurice struck matches, to light her up the dark staircase; 
and the condition of the stairs, the disagreeable smells, the 
poverty of wall and door revealed, made Johanna’s heart sink 
still further: to surroundings such as these had Ephie accus- 
tomed herself. They entered without noise; everything was 
just as Maurice had left it, except that the lamp had burned 
too high and filled the room with its fumes. As Johanna 
paused, undecided what to do, Ephie started up, and, at the sight 
of her sister, burst into loud cries of fear. Hiding her face, 
she sobbed so alarmingly that Johanna did not venture to 
approach her. She remained standing beside the table, one thin, 
ungloved hand resting on it, while Maurice bent over Ephie 
and tried to soothe her. 

“ Please fetch a droschke,” Johanna said grimly, as Ephie’s 
sobs showed no signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy 
search in the night, Maurice returned, she was standing in 
the same position, staring with drawn, unblinking eyes at the 
smoky lamp, which no one had thought of lowering. Ephie 
was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her. He 
coaxed her to rise, wrapped his rug round her, and carried her, 
more than he led her, down the stairs. 

“ Be good enough to drive home with us,” said Johanna. 
And so he sat with his arm round Ephie, who pressed her face 
against his shoulder, while the droschke jolted over the cobbled 
streets, and Johanna held herself pale and erect on the op- 
posite seat. She mounted the stairs in front of them. Ephie 
was limp and heavy going up; but no sooner did she catch 
sight of Mrs. Cayhill than, with a cry, she rushed from the 
young man’s side, and threw herself into her mother’s arms. 

“Oh, mummy, mummy!” 

Downstairs, in the rain-soaked street, Maurice found the 
droschke-driver waiting for his fare. It only amounted to a 
couple of marks, and it was no doubt a just retribution for 
what had happened that he should be obliged to lay it out; 
but, none the less, it seemed like the last straw — the last 
dismal touch — in a day of forlorn discomfort. 


V 


A few weeks later, a great variety of cabin-trunks and 
Saratogas blocked the corridor of the Pension. The addresses 
they bore were in Johanna’s small, pointed handwriting. 

On this, the last afternoon of the Cayhills’ stay in Leipzig, 
Maurice saw Johanna again for the first time. She had had 
her hands full. In the woods, on that damp October night, and 
on her subsequent wanderings, Epnie had caught a severe cold; 
and the doctor had feared an inflammation of the lungs. This 
had been staved off; but there was also, it seemed, a latent 
weakness of the chest, hitherto unsuspected, which kept them 
anxious. Ephie still had a dry, grating cough, which was 
troublesome at night, and left her tired and fretful by day. 
They were travelling direct to the South of France, where they 
intended to remain until she had quite recovered her strength. 

Maurice sat beside Johanna on the deep sofa where he and 
Ephie had worked at harmony together. But the windows 
of the room were shut now, and the room itself looked un- 
familiar; for it had been stripped of all the trifles and fancy 
things that had given it such a comfortable, home-like air, 
and was only the bare, lodging-house room once more. Jo- 
hanna was as self-possessed as of old, a trifle paler, a trifle 
thinner of lip. 

She told him that they intended leaving quietly the next 
morning, without partings or farewells. Ephie was still weak, 
and the less excitement she had to undergo, the better it would 
be for her. 

“Then I shall not see Ephie again?” queried Maurice in 
surprise. 

Johanna thought not: it would only recall the unhappy 
night to her memory; besides, she had not asked to see him, as 
she no doubt would have done, had she wished it.— —At this, 
the eleventh hour, Johanna did not think it worth while to tell 
Maurice that Ephie bore him an unalterable grudge. 

“ I never want to see him again.” 

That was all she said to Johanna; but, during her illness, 
she had brooded long over his treachery. And even if things 
had come all right in the end, she would never have been able 

257 


MAURICE GUEST 


258 

to forgive his speaking to her of Schilsky in the way he had 
done. No, she was finished with Maurice Guest; he was 
too double-faced, too deceitful for her. — And she cried bitterly, 
with her face turned to the wall. 

The young man could not but somewhat lamely agree with 
Johanna that it was better to let the matter end thus: for 
he felt that towards the Cayhills he had been guilty of a breach 
of trust such as it is difficult to forgive. At the same time, 
he was humanly hurt that Ephie would not even say good-bye 
to him. 

He asked their further plans, and learnt that as soon as Ephie 
was well again, they would sail for New York. 

“ My father has cabled twice for us.” 

Johanna’s manner was uncompromisingly dry and short. 
After her last words, there was a long pause, and Maurice 
made a movement to rise. But she put out her hand and de- 
tained him. 

“ There is something I should like to say to you.” And 
thereupon, with the abruptness of a nervous person : “ When 

I have seen my sister and mother safe back, I intend leaving 
home myself. I am going to Harvard.” 

Maurice realised that the girl was telling him a fact of con- 
siderable importance to herself, and did his best to look in- 
terested. 

“ Really? That’s always been a wish of yours, hasn’t it? ” 

“Yes.” Johanna coloured, hesitated as he had never known 
her to do, then burst out: “And now there is nothing in the 
way of it.” She drew her thumb across the leaf-corners of a 
book that was lying on the table. “ Oh, I know what you will 
say: how, now that Ephie has turned out to be weak and untrust- 
worthy, there is all the more reason for me to remain with her, to 
look after her. But that is not possible.” She faced him sharply, 
as though he had contradicted her. “ I am incapable of pre- 
tending to be the same when my feelings have changed ; and, 
as I told you — as I knew that night — I shall never be able to 
feel for Ephie as I did before. I am ready, as I said, to take 
all the blame for what has happened ; I was blind and careless. 
But if the care and affection of years count for nothing; if I 
have been so little able to win her confidence; if, indeed, I have 
only succeeded in making her dislike me, by my care of her, 
so that when she is in trouble, she turns from me, instead of 
to me — why, then I have failed lamentably in what I had 
made the chief duty of my life. 


MAURICE GUEST 


259 


“ Besides,” she continued more quietly, “ there is another 
reason: Ephie is going to fall a victim to her nerves. I see 
that; and my poor, foolish mother is doing her best to 
foster it. — You smile? Only because you do not understand 
what it means. It is no laughing matter. If an American 
woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven 
help her! — Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature 
to devote myself to sick-nursing where there is no real sick- 
ness. And then, too, my mother intends taking a French maid 
back with her, and a person of that class will perform such 
duties much more competently than I.” 

She spoke with bitterness. Maurice mumbled some words 
of sympathy, wondering why she should choose to say these 
things to him. 

“ Even at home my place is filled,” continued Johanna. “ The 
housekeeper who was appointed during our absence has been 
found so satisfactory that she will continue in the post after 
our return. Everywhere, you see, I have proved superfluous. 
There, as here.” 

“ I’m sure you’re mistaken,” said Maurice with more warmth. 
“ And, Miss Joan, there’s something I should like to say, if I 
may. Don’t you think you take what has happened here a 
little too seriously? No doubt Ephie behaved foolishly. But 
was it after all any more than a girlish escapade? ” 

“Too seriously?” 

Johanna turned her shortsighted eyes on the young man, 
and gazed at him almost pityingly. How little, oh, how little, 
she said to herself, one mortal knew and could know of another, 
in spite of the medium of speech, in spite of common ex- 
periences! Some of the nights at the beginning of Ephie’s 
illness returned vividly to her mind, nights, when she, Johanna, 
had paced her room by the hour, filled with a terrible dread, a 
numbing uncertainty, which she would sooner have died than 
have let cross her lips. She had borne it quite alone, this 
horrible fear ; her mother had been told of the whole affair only 
what it was absolutely necessary for her to know. And, natu- 
rally enough, the young man who now sat at her side, being a 
man, could not be expected to understand. But the conscious- 
ness of her isolation made Johanna speak with renewed harsh- 
ness. 

“Too seriously?” she repeated. “Oh, I think not. The 
girlish escapade, as you call it, was the least of it. If that 
had been all, if it had only been her infatuation for some one 


26 o 


MAURICE GUEST 


who was unworthy of her, I could have forgiven Ephie till 
seventy times seven. But, after all these years, after the way I 
have loved her — no, idolised her! — 'for her to treat me as she did 
— do you think it possible to take that too seriously? There 
was no reason she should not have had her little secrets. If she 
had let me see that something was going on, which she did not 
want to tell me about, do you think I should have forced 
her?” — and Johanna spoke in all good faith, forgetful of how 
she had been used to clip and doctor Ephie’s sentiments. “ But 
that she could deceive me wilfully, and lie so lightly, with a 
smile, when, all the time, she was living a double life, one to 
my face and one behind my back — that I cannot forgive. 
Something has died in me that I used to feel for her. I could 
never trust her again, and where there is no trust there can be 
no real love.” 

“ She didn’t understand what she was doing. She is so 
young.” 

“ Just for that reason. So young, and so skilled in deceit. 
That is hardest of all, even to think of: that she could wear 
her dear innocent face, while behind it, in her brain, were cold, 
calculating thoughts how she could best deceive me! If there 
had been but a single sign to waken my suspicions, then, yes, 
then I could have forgiven her,” said Johanna, and again forgot 
how often of late she had been puzzled by the subtle change in 
Ephie. “ If I could just know that, in spite of her efforts, 
she had been too candid to succeed ! ” 

She had unburdened herself and it had been a relief to her, 
but nothing could be helped or mended. Both knew this, and 
after a few polite questions about her future plans and studies, 
Maurice rose to take his leave. 

“ Say good-bve to them both for me, and give Ephie my 
love.” 

“ I will. I think she will be sorry afterwards that she 
did not see you. She has always liked you.” 

“ Good-bye then. Or perhaps it is only auf Wiedersehen? ” 

“ I hardly think so.” Johanna had returned to her usual 
sedate manner. “If I do visit Europe again, it will not be for 
five or six years at least.” 

“ And that’s a long time. Who knows where I may be, by 
then!” 

He held Johanna’s hand in his, and saw her gauntly slim 
figure outlined against the bare sitting-room. It was not likely 
that they would ever meet again. But he could not summon up 


MAURICE GUEST 


261 


any very lively feelings of regret. Johanna had not touched him 
deeply; she had left him as cool as he had no doubt left her; 
neither had found the key to the other. Her chief attraction 
for him had been her devotion to Ephie; and now, having been 
put to the test, this was found wanting. She had been wounded 
in her own pride and self-love, and could not forgive. At 
heart she was no more generous and unselfish than the rest. 

He repeated farewell messages as he stood in the passage. 
Johanna held the front door open for him, and, as he went 
down the stairs, he heard it close behind him, with that ex- 
treme noiselessness that was characteristic of Johanna’s treat- 
ment of it. 

The following morning, shortly after ten o’clock, a train 
steamed out of the Thiiringer Bahnhof , carrying the Cayhills 
with it. The day was misty and cheerless, and none of the 
three travellers turned her head to give the town a parting 
glance. They left unattended, without flowers or other souve- 
nirs, without any of the demonstratively pathetic farewells, the 
waving of hats, and crowding about the carriage-door, which 
one of the family, at least, had connected inseverably with their 
departure. And thus Ephie’s musical studies came to an abrupt 
and untimely end. 

* * * * * 

“ My faith in women is shattered. I shall never believe in 
a woman again.” 

Dove paced the floor of Maurice’s room with long and 
steady strides, beneath which a particular board creaked at 
intervals. His voice was husky, and the ruddiness of his 
cheeks had paled. 

At the outset of Ephie’s illness, Dove had called every morn- 
ing at the Pension , to make inquiries and to leave his re- 
gards. But when the story leaked out, as it soon did, in an 
exaggerated and distorted form, he straightway ceased his 
visits. Thus he was wholly unprepared for the family’s hur- 
ried departure, the news of which was broken to him by Mau- 
rice. Dove was dumbfounded. Not a single sententious phrase 
crossed his lips; and he remained unashamed of the moisture 
that dimmed his eyes. But he maintained his bearing com- 
mendably; and it was impossible not to admire the upright, 
manly air with which he walked down the street. 

The next day, however, he returned, and was silent no 
longer. He made no secret of having been hard hit; just as 


262 MAURICE GUEST 

previously he had let his friends into his hopes and intentions, 
so now every one heard of his reverses. He felt a tremendous 
need of unbosoming himself; he had been so sure of success, 
or, at least, so unthinking of failure, and the blow to his self- 
esteem was a rude one. 

Maurice sat with his hands in his pockets, and tried to urge 
reason. But Dove would not admit even the possibility of his 
having been mistaken. He had received innumerable proofs 
of Ephie’s regard for him. 

“ Remember how young she was! Girls of that age never 
know their own minds,” said Maurice. But Dove was in- 
clined to take Johanna’s sterner view, and to cry: “ So young 
and so untender!” for which he, too, substituted “untrue”; 
and, just on this score, to deduce unfavourable inferences foi 
Ephie’s whole moral character. As Maurice listened to him, 
he could not help thinking that Johanna’s affection had been 
of the same nature as Dove’s, in other words, had had a touch 
of the masculine about it: it had existed only as long as it 
could guide and subordinate; it denied to its object any midget 
attempt at individual life; it set up lofty moral standards, and 
was implacable when a smaller, frailer being found it impossible 
to live up to them. 

At the same time, he was sorry for Dove, who, in his blind- 
ness, had laid himself open to receive this snubbing; and he 
listened patiently, even a thought flattered by his confidence, 
until he learnt from Madeleine that Dove was making the 
round of his acquaintances, and behaving in the same way to 
anyone who would let him. Then he found that the openness 
with which Dove related his past hopes, and the marks of af- 
fection Ephie had given him, bordered on indecency. He said 
so, with a wrathful frankness; but Dove could not see it in 
that light, and was not offended. 

As the personal smart weakened, the more serious question 
that Dove had to face was, what he was going to tell his re- 
latives at home. For it now came out that he had represented 
the affair to them as settled; in his perfectly sincere optimism, 
he had regarded himself as an all but engaged man. And the 
point that disturbed him was, how to back out with dignity, 
yet without violating the truth, on which he set great store. 

“ I’m sure he needn’t let that trouble him,” said Madeleine, 
on hearing of his dilemma. “ He has only to say that he has 
changed his mind, which is true enough.” 

This was the conclusion Dove eventually came to himself — 


MAURICE GUEST 


263 

though not with such unseemly haste as Madeleine. Having 
approached the matter from all sides, he argued that it would 
be more considerate to Ephie to put it in this light than to 
tell the story in detail. And consequently, two elderly people 
in Peterborough nodded to each other one morning over the 
breakfast-table, and agreed that Edward had done well. They 
had not been much in favour of the American match, but they 
had trusted implicitly in their son’s good sense, and now, as 
ever, he had acted in the most becoming way. He had never 
given them an hour’s uneasiness since his birth. 

Dove wrote: 

Circumstances have arisen , my dear parents , which make it 
incontrovertibly clear to me that the young lady to whom I 
was paying my addresses when I consulted you in summer and 
myself would not have known true happiness in our union. On 
more intimate acquaintance it transpired that our characters 
were totally unsuited. I have therefore found it advisable to 
banish the affair from my mind and to devote myself wholly to 
my studies. 

As time passed, and Dove was able to view what had hap- 
pened more objectively, he began to feel and even to hint that, 
all things considered, he had had a rather lucky escape; and 
from this, it was not very far to believing that if he had not 
just seen through the whole affair from the beginning, he 
had at any rate had some inkling of it; and now, instead of 
giving proofs of Ephie’s affection, he narrated the gradual 
growth of his suspicions, and how these had ultimately been 
verified. In conclusion, he congratulated himself on having 
drawn back, with open eyes, while there was still time. 

“ Like his cheek! ” said Madeleine. “ But he could imagine 
himself into being the Shah of Persia, if he sat down and gave 
his mind to it. I don’t believe the snub is going to do him a 
bit of good. He bobs up again like a cork, irrepressible. Have 
you heard him quote: ‘ Frailty thy name is woman! ’ or: ‘If 
women could be fair and yet not fond ’ ? — It’s as good as a 
piay.” 

But altogether, Madeleine was very sharp of tongue since 
she learnt the part Maurice had played in what, for a day, was 
the scandal of the English-speaking colony. She had taken him 
to task at once, for his “ lamentable interference.” 

“ Haven’t I warned you, Maurice, not to mix yourself up 


MAURICE GUEST 


264 

in Louise’s affairs? No good can come of it. She breeds mis- 
chief. And if that absurd child had really drowned herself ” — 
in the version of the story that had reached Madeleine’s ears, 
Maurice was represented fishing Ephie bodily from the river — 
“you would have had to bear the whole brunt of the blame. 
It ought to teach you a lesson. For you’re just the kind of 
boy women will always take advantage of, a mean advantage, 
you know. Consider how you were treated in this case — by 
both of them ! They were not a scrap grateful to you for what 
you did — women never are. They only look down on you for 
letting them have their own way. Kindness and complaisance 
don’t move them. A well-developed biceps and a cruel mouth 
— that’s what they want, and that’s all ! ” she wound up with a 
flourish, in an extreme bad temper. 

She sat, one dull November afternoon, at her piano, and con- 
tinued to run her fingers over the keys. Maurice leant on the 
lid, and listened to her. But they had barely exchanged a word, 
when there was a light tap at the door, and Krafft entered. 
Both started at his unexpected appearance, and Madeleine 
cried: “You come in like a ghost, to frighten people out of 
their wits.” 

Krafft was buttoned to the chin in a travelling-ulster, and 
looked pale and thin. 

“What news from St. Petersburg?” queried Madeleine 
with a certain asperity. 

But Maurice recalled an errand he had to do in town; and, 
on hearing this, Krafft, who was lolling aimlessly, declared that 
he would accompany him. 

“But you’ve only just come!” expostulated Madeleine. 
“ What in the name of goodness did you climb the stairs for? ” 

He patted her cheek, without replying. 

The young men went away together, Maurice puffing some- 
what ostentatiously at a cigarette. The wind was cold, and 
Krafft seemed to shrink into his ulster before it, keeping his 
hands deep in his pockets. But from time to time, he threw a 
side-glance at his friend, and at length asked, in the tone of 
appeal which Maurice found it hard to withstand : “ What’s the 
matter, Liebster f Why are you so different? — so changed?” 

“The matter? Nothing — that I’m aware of,” said Mau- 
rice, and considered the tip of his cigarette. 

“ Oh, yes, there is,” and Krafft laid a caressing hand on his 
companion’s arm. “You are changed. You’re not frank with 
me. I feel such things at once.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


265 

“ Well, how on earth am I to know when to be frank with 
you, and when not? Before you . . . not very long ago, you 
behaved as if you didn’t want to have anything more to do 
with me.” 

“ You are changed, and, if I’m not mistaken, I know why,” 
said Krafft, ignoring his answer. “ You have been listening 
to gossip — to what my enemies say of me.” 

“ I don’t listen to gossip. And I didn’t know you had 
enemies, as you call them.” 

“I? — and not have enemies?” He flared up as though 
Maurice had affronted him. “ My good fellow, did you ever 
hear of a man worth his salt, who didn’t have enemies? It’s 
the penalty one pays : only the dolts and the ‘ all-too-many ’ 
are friends with the whole world. No one who has work to do 
that’s worth doing, can avoid making enemies. And who knows 
what a friend is, who hasn’t an enemy to match him? It’s a 
question of light and shade, theme and counter-theme, of 
artistic proportion.” He laughed, in his superior way. But 
directly afterwards, he dropped back into his former humble 
tone. “ But that you, my friend, are so ready to let yourself 
be influenced — I should not have believed it of you.” 

“What I heard, I heard from Fiirst; and I have no reason 
to suspect him of falsehood. — Of course, if you assure me it 
was not true, that’s a different thing.” He turned so sharply 
that he sent a beautiful flush over Krafft’s face. “ Come, give 
me your word, Heinz, and things will be straight again.” 

But Krafft merely shrugged his shoulders, and his colour 
subsided as rapidly as it had risen. 

“ Are you still such an outsider,” he asked, “ after all this 
time — in my society — as to attach importance to a word? 
What is ‘ giving a word ’ ? Do you really think it is of any 
value? May I not give it to-night, and take it back to-mor- 
row, according to the mood I am in, according to whether I 
believe it myself or not, at the moment? — You think a thing 
must either be true or not true? You are wrong. Do you be- 
lieve, when you answer a question in the affirmative or the 
negative, that you are actually telling the truth? No, my 
friend, to be perfectly truthful one would need to lose one- 
self in a maze of explanation, such as no questioner would have 
the patience to listen to. One would need to take into account 
the innumerable threads that have gone to making the state- 
ment what it is. Do you think, for instance, if I answered yes 
or no, in the present case, it would be true? If I deny what you 


266 


MAURICE GUEST 


heard — does that tell you that I have longed with all my heart 
for it to come to pass? Or say I admit it — I should need to 
unroll my life before you to make you understand. No, there’s 
no such thing as absolute truth. If there were, the finest subtle- 
ties of existence would be lost. There is neither positive truth 
nor positive untruth; life is not so coarse-fibred as that. And 
only the grossest natures can be satisfied with a blunt yes or no. 
Truth? — it is one of the many miserable conventions the human 
brain has tortured itself with, and its first principle is an utter 
lack of the imaginative faculties. — Adieu!'* 


VI 


In the days that followed, Maurice threw himself heart and 
soul into his work. He had lost ground of late, he saw it 
plainly now: after his vigorous start, he had quickly grown 
slack. He was not, to-day, at the stage he ought to be, and there 
was not a doubt but that Schwarz saw it, too. Now that he 

came to think of it, he had more than once been aware of a 

studied coolness in the master’s manner, of a rather ostentatious 
indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: 
and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz’s attitude towards 

those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, 

Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha’s favour, 
he must work like a coal-heaver. But the fact was, the stren- 
uous industry to which he now condemned himself, was some- 
thing of a relaxation after the mental anxiety he had recently 
undergone; this striking of a black and white keyboard was a 
pleasant, thought-deadening employment, and could be got 
through, no matter what one’s mood. — And so he rose early 
again, and did not leave the house till he had five hours’ practice 
behind him. 

W er sick der Einsamkeit ergiebt, ach, der ist bald allein: 
at the end of a fortnight, Maurice smiled to find the words of 
Goethe’s song proved on himself. If he did not go to see his 
friends, none of them came to him. Dove, who was at the 
stage of: “I told you so,” in the affair of the Cayhills, had 
found fresh listeners, who were more sympathetic than Mau- 
rice could be expected to be: and Madeleine was up to her ears 
in work, as she phrased it, with the “ C minor Beethoven.” 

“ Agility of finger equals softening of the brain ” was a 
frequent gibe of Krafft’s; and now and then, at the close of a 
hard day’s work, Maurice believed that the saying contained a 
grain of truth. Opening both halves of his window, he would 
lean out on the sill, too tired for connected thought. But 
when dusk fell, he lay on the sofa, with his arms clasped under 
his head, his knees crossed in the air. 

At first, in his new buoyancy of spirit, he was able to keep 
foolish ideas behind him, as well as to put away all recollection 
of the disagreeable events he had been mixed up in of late: after 

267 


268 


MAURICE GUEST 


having, for weeks, borne a load that was too heavy for him, he 
breathed freely once more. The responsibility of taking care of 
Ephie had been removed from him — and this by far outweighed 
the little that he missed her. The matter had wound up, too, 
in a fairly peaceable way; all being considered, things might 
have been worse. So, at first, he throve under his light-hearted- 
ness; and only now became aware how great the strain of the 
past few weeks had been. His chief sensation was relief, and 
also of relief at being able to feel relieved — indeed, the moment 
even came when he thought it would be possible calmly to ac- 
cept the fact of Louise having left the town, and of his never 
being likely to see her again. 

Gradually, however, he began to be astonished at himself, 
and in the background of his mind, there arose a somewhat 
morbid curiosity, even a slight alarm, at his own indiffer- 
ence. He found it hard to understand himself. Could his 
feelings, those feelings which, a week or two ago, he had be- 
lieved unalterable, have changed in so short a time? Was his 
nature one of so little stability? He began to consider him- 
self with something approaching dismay, and though, all this 
time, he had been going about on a kind of mental tiptoe, for 
fear of rousing something that might be dormant in him, he 
now could not help probing himself, in order to see if the change 
he observed were genuine or not. And this with a steadily in- 
creasing frequency. Instead of continuing thankful for the 
respite, he ultimately grew uneasy under it. Am I a person of 
this weak, straw-like consistency, to be tossed about by every 
wind that blows ? Is there something beneath it all that I can- 
not fathom? 

He had not seen Louise since the night he had left her 
alseep beside the sofa; and he was resolved not to see her — 
not, at least, until she wished to see him. It was much better 
for him that the uncertainties of the bygone months did not 
begin anew ; then, too, she had called him to her when she was 
in trouble, and not for anything in the world would he pre- 
sume on her appeal. Besides, his presence would recall to 
her the unpleasant details connected with Ephie’s visit, which 
he hoped she had by this time begun to forget. Thus he 
argued with himself, giving several reasons where one would 
have served; and the upshot of it was, that his own state of 
mind occupied him considerably. 

His friends noticed the improvement in him; the careworn 
expression that had settled down on him of late gave way to 


MAURICE GUEST 


269 

his old air of animation ; and on all the small topics of the day, 
he brought a sympathetic interest to bear, such as people had 
ceased to expect from him. Madeleine, in particular, was satis- 
fied with her “ boy,” as she took to calling him. She noted 
and checked off, in wise silence, each inch of his progress along 
the road of healthy endeavour; and the relations between them 
bcame almost as hearty as at the commencement of their friend- 
ship. Privately, she believed that the events of the past month 
had taught him a lesson, which he would not soon forget. It was 
sufficient, however, if they had inspired him with a distrust of 
Louise, which would keep him from her for the present; for 
Madeleine had grounds for believing that before many weeks 
had passed, Louise would have left Leipzig. 

So she kept Maurice as close to her as work permitted; and 
as the winter’s flood of concerts set in, in full force, he accom- 
panied her, almost nightly, to the Old Gewandhaus or the 
Alberthalle ; for Madeleine was an indefatigable concert-goer, 
and never missed a performer of note, rarely even a first ap- 
pearance at the Hotel de Prusse or a Bliithner Matinee . On 
the night she herself played in an Abendunterhaltung, with 
the easily gained success that attended all she did, Maurice 
went with her to the green-room, and was the first afterwards 
to tell her how her performance had “ gone.” That same 
evening she took him with her to the house of friends of hers, 
the Hensels. There he met some of the best musical society 
of the place, made a pleasant impression, and was invited to 
return. 

Meanwhile, winter had set in, with extreme severity. Pier- 
cing north winds drove down the narrow streets, and raged 
round the corners of the Gewandhaus square: on emerging 
from the Probe on a Wednesday morning, one’s breath was 
cut clean off, and the tears raced down one’s cheeks. When 
the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts — a deadly, 
stagnant kind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of 
the skin and every cranny of the house. Then came the snow, 
which fell for three days and nights on end, and for several 
nights after, so that the town was lost under a white pall: 
house-entrances were with difficulty kept free, and the swept 
streets were banked with walls of snow, four and five feet high. 
The night-frosts redoubled their keenness; the snow underfoot 
crackled like electric sparks; the sleighs crunched the roads. 
But except for this, and for the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, 
the streets were as noiseless as though laid with straw, and espe- 


270 


MAURICE GUEST 


daily while fresh snow still formed a soft coating on the crisp 
layer below. All dripping water hung as icicles; water froze 
in ewers and pitchers; milk froze in cans and jugs; and this 
though the great stoves in the dwelling-rooms were heated to 
bursting-point. Red-nosed, red-eared men, on whose beards 
and moustaches the breath had turned to ice-drops, cried to 
one another at street-corners that such a winter had not been 
known for thirty years; and, as they spoke, they stamped their 
feet, and clapped their hands, to keep the chilly blood agoing. 
Women muffled and veiled themselves like Orientals, hardly 
showing the tips of their noses; and all manner of strange, 
antiquated fur-garments saw the day. At night, if one opened 
a window, and peered out at the houses crouching beneath their 
thick white load, and at the deserted, snow-bound streets, over 
which the street-lamps threw a pale, uncertain light — at night, 
familiar things took on an unfamiliar aspect, and the well- 
known streets might have been the untrodden ways that led to 
a new world. 

Early in November, all ponds and pools were bearing, and 
forthwith many hundreds of people forgot the severity of the 
weather, and thronged out with their skates. 

Maurice was among the first. He was a passionate skater; 
and it was the one form of sport in which he excelled. As 
four o’clock came round, he could contain himself no longer; 
he would rather have gone without his dinner, than have missed, 
on the Johannateich, the two hours that elapsed before the 
sweepers, crying : " Feierabend! ” drove the skaters before 
them, with their brooms. In a tightly buttoned square jacket, 
the collar of which was turned up as far as it would go, with 
the flaps of his astrachan cap drawn over his ears, his hands in 
coarse woollen gloves, Maurice defied the cold, flying round the 
two ponds that formed the Johannateich, or practising intricate 
figures with a Canadian acquaintance in a corner. 

Madeleine watched him approvingly from one of the wooden 
bridges that spanned the neck connecting the ponds. She re- 
joiced at his glowing face and vigorous, boyish pleasure, also 
at the skill that marked him out as one of the best skaters 
present. For some time, Maurice tried in vain to persuade her 
to join him. Madeleine, usually so confident, was here diffident 
and timid. She had never in her life attempted to skate, and 
was sure she would fall. And what should she do if she broke 
a thumb or strained a finger? — with her Prufung just before 
the door. She would never have the courage to confess to 


MAURICE GUEST 


271 

Schwarz how it had happened ; for he was against “ sport ” in 
any form. But Maurice laughed at her fears. 

“ There is not the least chance of your falling,” he cried up 
to her. “ Do come down, Madeleine. Before you’ve gone 
round twice, you’ll be able to throw off all those mufflings.” 

Finally, she let herself be persuaded, and according to his 
promise, Maurice remained at her side from the moment of her 
first, hesitating steps, each of which was accompanied by a faint 
scream, to the time when, with the aid of only one of his 
hands, she made uncertain efforts at striking out. She did not 
learn quickly; but she was soon as enthusiastic a skater as 
Maurice himself; and he fell into the habit of calling for her, 
every afternoon, on his way to the ponds. 

Dove was also of assistance in the beginning, and, as usual, 
was well up in the theory of the thing, though he did not shine 
in practice. 

“ Oh, bother, never mind how you go at first. That’ll come 
afterwards,” said Maurice impatiently. But Dove thought 
the rules should be observed from the beginning, and gave 
Madeleine minute instructions how to place her feet. 

Towards five o’clock, the ice grew more crowded, and espe- 
cially was this the case on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the 
schools had half-holidays. On one of these latter days, Maurice 
did not find Madeleine at home; and he had been on the 
ponds for nearly an hour, before he espied her on a bench 
beside the garderobe, having her skates put on by a blue- 
smocked attendant. He waved his cap to her, and skated 
over. 

“ Why are you so late? ” 

“ Oh, thank goodness, there you are. I should never have 
dared to stand up alone in this crowd. Aren’t these children 
awful? Get away, you little brutes! If you touch me, I’ll 
fall. — Here, give me change,” she said to the ice-man, holding 
out a twenty-pfennig piece. 

Maurice saw that she was unusually excited, and as soon as 
he had drawn her out of reach of the children, asked her the 
reason. 

“ I’ve something interesting to tell you, Maurice.” 

But here Dove, coming up behind, took possession of her 
left hand, with no other greeting than the military salute, 
which, on the ice, he adopted for all his friends, male and 
female, alike; and Madeleine hastily swallowed the rest of her 
sentence.. 


272 


MAURICE GUEST 


They skated round the larger of the ponds several times with- 
out stopping. The cold evening air stung their faces; the sun 
had gone down in a lurid haze; Madeleine’s skirts swayed be- 
hind her and lent her a fictitious grace. 

But presently she cried a halt, and while she rested in a 
quiet corner, they watched Maurice doing a complicated figure, 
which he and his Canadian friend had invented the day before. 
Dove was explaining how it was done — “ It is really not so 
hard as it looks ” — when, with a cry of “ A chtung! ” some one 
whizzed in among them, scattered the group, and, revolving 
on himself, ended with a jump in the air. It was James. He 
took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, in the most un- 
concerned manner possible. 

“ I don’t think such acrobatic tricks should be allowed,” said 
Madeleine disapprovingly; she had been forced to grab Dove’s 
arm to keep her balance. 

“ Say, do you boys know the river has six inches and will be 
open to-morrow, if it isn’t to-day?” asked James, stooping to 
tighten a strap. 

“Is that so? Oh gee, that’s fine!” cried Miss Martin, 
who had skated leisurely up in his rear. “ Say, you people, 
why don’t we fix up a party an’ go up it nights? A lady in 
my boarding-house done that with some folks she was 
acquainted with last year. Seems to me we oughtn’t to be be- 
hind.” 

Miss Martin was a skilled and graceful skater, and looked 
her best in a dark fur hat and jacket, which set off her 
abundance of pale flaxen hair. Others had followed her, and 
it was resolved to form a party for the following evening, pro- 
vided Dove had previously ascertained if the river actually 
was “ free,” in order that they ran no risk of being ignomin- 
iously turned off. 

“ The ice may be a bit rough, but it’s a fine run to Conne- 
witz.” 

“ An’ by moonlight, too — but say, is there a moon ? Why, 
I presume there ought to be,” said Miss Martin. 

“‘Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?’” 
quoted Dove, examining a tiny pocket-calendar. 

“Oh gee, that’s fine!” repeated Miss Martin, on hearing 
his answer. “ Say, we must dance a Franqaise . Mr. Guest, 
you an’ I’ll be partners, I surmise,” and ceasing to waltz and 
pirouette with James, she took a long sweep, then stood steady, 
and let her skates bear her out to the middle of the pond. Her 


MAURICE GUEST 


273 

skirts clung close in front, and swept out behind her lithe fig- 
ure, until it was lost in the crowd. 

“Don’t you wish you could skate like that?” asked the 
sharp-tongued little student, called Dickensey, who was 
standing beside Madeleine. Madeleine, who held him in con- 
tempt because his trousers were baggy at the knees, and be- 
cause he had once appeared at a ball in white cotton gloves, 
answered with asperity that there were other things in life 
besides skating. She had no further chance of speaking to 
Maurice in private, so postponed telling her news till the fol- 
lowing evening. 

Shortly after eight o’clock, the next night, a noisy party 
whistled and hallooed in the street below Maurice’s window. 
He was the last to join, and then some ten or eleven of them 
picked their steps along the hard-frozen ruts of the Schleus- 
siger JVeg, a road that followed the river to the outskirts of 
the town. Just above the Germaniabad, a rough seat had been 
erected on the ice, for the convenience of skaters. They were 
the first to make use of it; the snow before it was untrodden; 
and the Pleisse wound white and solitary between its banks of 
snow. 

They set off in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, each striking out 
for himself. When, however, they had passed the narrower 
windings, gone under the iron bridge which was low enough 
to catch the unwary by the forehead, and when the full breadth 
of the river was before them, they took hands, and, forming 
a long line, skated in time to the songs some one struck up, 
and in which all joined: The Rose of Sharon , Jingle Bells , 
There is a Tavern in our Town. As they advanced to the 
corners where the big trees trailed their naked branches on 
the ice, just as in summer they sank their leaves in the water, 
Miss Jensen, who, despite her proportions, was a surprisingly 
good skater, sent her big voice over the snow-bound stillness, 
in an aria from the Prophet; and after this, Miss Martin, not 
to be done, struck up the popular Allerseelen. This was the 
song of the hour; they all knew it, and up and down and 
across the ice rang out their voices in unison: Wie einst im 
Mai , wie einst im Mai. 

Inside Wagner’s Waldcafe at Connewitz, they sat closely 
packed round one of the wooden tables, and drank beer and 
coffee, and ate Berliner Pfannkuchen. The great iron stove 
was almost red-hot; the ladies threw off their wrappings; cold 
faces glowed and burnt, and frozen hands tingled. One and 


274 


MAURICE GUEST 


all were in high spirits, and the jollity reached a climax when, 
having exchanged hats, James and Miss Jensen cleared a space 
in the middle of the floor and danced a nigger-dance, the lady 
with her skirts tucked up above her ankles. In the adjoining 
room, some one began to play a concertina, and then two or 
three couples stood up and danced, with much laughter and 
many outcries at the narrowness of the space. Even Dove 
joined in, his partner being a very pretty American, whom 
Miss Martin had brought with her, and whose side Dove had 
not left for a moment. Only Madeleine and Dickensey sat 
aloof, and for once were agreed : Americans were really “ very 
bad form.” There was no livelier pair than Maurice and Miss 
Martin; the latter’s voice could be heard above all others, as 
she taught Maurice new steps in a corner of the room. Her 
flaxen hair had partly come loose, and she did not stop to put 
it up. They were the first to run through the dark garden, 
past the snow-laden benches and arbours, which, in summer, 
were buried in greenery; and, from the low wooden landing- 
place, they jumped hand in hand on to the ice, and had shot 
a long way down the river before any of the rest could follow 
them. 

But this did not please Madeleine. As it was, she was vexed 
at not having had the opportunity of a quiet word with Mau- 
rice; and when she had laboriously skated up, with Dickensey, 
to the spot where, in a bright splash of moonlight, Maurice and 
Miss Martin were cutting ingenious capers, she cried to the 
former in a peremptory tone: “ There’s something wrong with 
my skate, Maurice. Will you look at it, please?” and as 
sharply declined Dickensey’s proffered aid. 

Maurice came to her side at once, and in this way she de- 
tained him. But Dickensey hovered not far off, and Miss 
Martin was still in sight. Madeleine caught her skate in a 
crack, fell on her knee, and said she had now loosened the strap 
altogether. She sat down on a heap of snow, and Dickensey’s 
shade vanished good-naturedly round a corner. 

“ Well, you seem to be enjoying yourself,” she said as 
Maurice drew off his gloves and knelt down. 

“ Why, yes, aren’t you ? ” he replied so frankly that she did 
not continue the subject. 

“ I’ve been trying all the evening to get a word with you. 
I told you yesterday, you remember, that I wanted to speak 
to you. Sit down here, for a moment, so that we can talk in 
peace,” and she spread part of her skirt over the snow-heap. 


MAURICE GUEST 


275 

Maurice complied, and she could not discover any trace of 
reluctance in his manner. 

“ I want your advice,” she continued. “ I was taken quite 
by surprise myself. Schwarz sent for me, you know, after 
counterpoint. It was about my Priifung at Easter. If I play 
then, it’s a case of the C minor Beethoven. Well, now he says 
it’s a thousand pities for me to break off just at the stage I’m 
at, and he wants me to stay for another year. If I do, he’ll 
give me the G major — that’s a temptation, isn’t it? On the 
other hand, I shall have been here my full time — three years — - 
at Easter. That’s a year longer than I originally intended, and 
I feel I’m getting too old to be a pupil. But this talk with 
Schwarz has upset my plans. I’m naturally flattered at his 
interesting himself in me. He wouldn’t do it for every one. 
And I do feel I could gain an immense deal in another year. — 
Now, what do you think? ” 

“ Why, stay, of course, Madeleine. If you can afford it, 
that is. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave.” 

“ Oh, my capital will last so long, and it’s a good enough 
investment.” 

“ But wasn’t a place being kept open for you in a 
school?” 

“Yes; but I don’t think a year more or less will make much 
difference to them. I must sound them, of course, though,” 
said Madeleine, and did not mention that she had written and 
posted the letter the night before. “ Then you advise me to 
stay ? ” 

“ Why, of course,” he repeated, and was mildly astonished 
at her. “ If everything is as smooth as you say.” 

“You would miss me, if I left? ” 

“Why, of course I should,” he said again, and wondered 
what in the world she was driving at. 

“ Well, all the better,” replied Madeleine. “ For when one 
has really got to like a person, one would rather it made a dif- 
ference than not.” 

She was silent after this, and sat looking down the stretch of 
ice they had travelled: the moon was behind a cloud, and the 
woods on either side were masses of dense black shadow. Not 
a soul was in sight; the river was like a deserted highway. 
Madeleine stared down it, and did not feel exactly satisfied with 
the result of her investigation. She had not expected anything 
extraordinary — Heaven forbid! — but she had been uncomfort- 
ably conscious of Maurice’s surprise. To her last remark, he 


276 MAURICE GUEST 

had made no answer: he was occupied with the screw of one of 
his skates. 

She drew his attention to the fact that, if she remained in 
Leipzig for another twelvemonth, they would finish at the same 
time; and thereupon she sketched out a plan of them going 
somewhere together, and starting a music-school of their own. 
Maurice, who thought she was jesting, laughingly assented. 
But Madeleine was in earnest: “ Other people have done it — 
why shouldn’t we? We could take a ’cellist with us, and go 
to America, or Australia, or Canada — there are hundreds of 
places. And there’s a great deal of money in it, I’m sure. A 
little capital would be needed to begin with, but not much, and 
I could supply that. You’ve always said you dreaded going 
back to the English provinces to decay — here’s your chance!” 

She saw the whole scheme cut and dried before her. As 
they skated after the rest, she continued to enlarge upon it, in 
a detailed way that astonished Maurice. He confessed that, 
with a head like hers to conduct it, such a plan stood a fair 
chance of success; and thus encouraged, Madeleine undertook 
to make a kind of beginning at once, by sounding some of the 
numerous friends she had, scattered through America. Her 
idea was that they should go over together, and travel to va- 
rious places, giving concerts, and acquainting themselves, as 
they did so, with the musical conditions of the towns they 
visited. 

“ And the ’cellist shall be an American — that will draw.” 

According to the pace at which they were skating, the others 
should have remained well out of reach. But on turning a 
corner, they came upon the whole party dancing a Frangaise — 
which two members whistled — on a patch of ice that was 
smoother than the rest. 

“ Here, Guest, come along, we want you,” was the cry as 
soon as Maurice appeared; and, to Madeleine’s deep dis- 
pleasure, she was thrown on Dove, whose skill had not suf- 
ficed. When the dancing was over, Maurice once more found 
himself with Miss Martin, whom, for some distance, he pushed 
before him, she standing steady on her skates, and talking to 
him over her shoulder. 

“ That wasn’t a bit pretty of you, Mr. Guest,” she asserted, 
with her long, slow, twanged speech. “ It was fixed up yes- 
terday, I recollect, that you were to dance the Frangaise with 
me. Yes, indeed. An’ then I had to take up with Mr. Dove. 
Now Mr. Dove is just a lovely gentleman, but he don’t skate 


MAURICE GUEST 


277 


elegantly, an’ he nearly tumbled me twice. Yes, indeed. But 
I presume when Miss Wade says come, then you’re most obliged 
to go. 

“ How is it one don’t ever see you now? ” she queried a mo- 
ment later. “ It isn’t anyhow so pleasurable at dinner as it 
used to be. But I hear you’re working most hard — it’s to’ 
bad.” 

“ It’s what one comes to here.” 

“ I guess it is. But I do like to see my friends once in a 
while. Say, now, Mr. Guest, won’t you drink coffee with 
me one afternoon? I’ll make you some real American coffee 
if you do, sir. What they call coffee here don’t count.” 

She turned, offered him her hand, and they began to skate in 
long, outward curving lines. 

“ I think one has just a fine time here, don’t you? ” she con- 
tinued. “ Momma, she came right with me, an’ stopped a bit, 
till I was fixed up in a boarding-house. But she didn’t find 
it agreeable, no sir. She missed America, an’ presumed I would, 
too. When she was leaving, she said to me: ‘ El’nor Martin, 
if you find you can’t endure it among these Dutch, just you 
cable, and poppa he’ll come along an’ fetch you right home/ 
But I’m sure I haven’t desired to quit, no, not once. I think 
it’s just fine. But then I’ve gotten me so many friends I don’t 
ever need to feel lonesome. Why, my friend Susie Fay, she 
says: ‘Why, El’nor, I guess you’re acquainted with most every 
one in the place.’ An’ I reckon she’s not far out. Anyways 
there ain’t more than two Americans in the city I don’t know. 
An’ I see most all strangers that come. Say, are you acquainted 
with Miss Moses? She’s from Chicago, an’ resides in a board- 
ing-house way down by the Colonnaden. I got acquainted 
with her yesterday. She’s a lovely lady, an’, why, she’s just as 
smart as she can be. Say, if you like, I’ll invite her along, so 
you can get acquainted with her too.” 

Maurice expressed pleasure at the prospect; and Miss Mar- 
tin continued to rattle on, with easy frankness, of herself, her 
family, and her friends. He listened vaguely, with half an 
ear, since it was only required of him to throw in an occasional 
word of assent. But suddenly his attention was arrested, and 
brought headlong back to what she was saying: in the string 
of names that fell from her tongue, he believed he had caught 
one he knew. 

“Miss Dufrayer?” he queried. 

“ That’s it,” replied his companion. “ Louise Dufrayer. 


278 MAURICE GUEST 

Well, sir, as I was going on to remark, when first I was ac- 
quainted with her, she was just as sweet as she could be; yes, 
indeed; why, she was just dandy. But she hasn’t behaved a 
bit pretty — I presume you heard tell of what took place here 
this fall?” 

“Then you know Miss Dufrayer?” 

“ Yes, indeed. But I don’t see her any more, an* I guess 
I don’t want to. Not but what I’ve heard she feels pretty 
mean about it now — beg pardon? — how I know? Why, in- 
deed, the other day, Schwarz come in an’ told us how she’s 
moping what she can — moping herself to death — if I recol- 
lect, those were his very words. Yes, indeed. She don’t take 
lessons no more, I presume. I think she should go right away 
from this city. It ain’t possible to be acquainted with her any 
more, for all she’s so lonesome, an’ one feels sort of bad about 
it, yes, indeed. But momma, the last thing she said to me 
was: ‘Now El’nor Martin, just keep your eyes open, an’ 
don’t get acquainted with people you might feel bad about 
afterwards.’ An’ I presume momma was right. I don’t — 
Oh, say, do look at her, isn’t she a peach ? ” — this, as her 
pretty friend, with Dove in tow, came gliding up to them. 
“Say, Susie Fay, are you acquainted with Mr. Guest?” 

“Mr. Guest. Pleased to know you,” said Susie cordially; 
and Miss Martin was good-natured enough to skate off with 
Dove, leaving Maurice to her friend. 

But afterwards, at the bench, as he was undoing Made- 
leine’s skates, he overheard pretty Susie remark, without much 
care to moderate her voice: “Say, El’nor Martin, that’s the 
quietest sort of young man I’ve ever shown round a district. 
Why, seems to me, he couldn’t say ‘ shoh.’ Guess you 
shouldn’t have left us, El’nor.” 

And Miss Martin guessed so, too. 


VII 


When he had seen Madeleine home, Maurice returned to his 
room, and not feeling inclined to sleep, sat down to read. But 
his thoughts strayed; he forgot to turn the page; and sat 
staring over the book at the pattern of the tablecloth. In- 
cidents of the evening flashed before him: Miss Jensen, in 
James’s hat, with her skirts pinned up; Madeleine earnest and 
decisive on the bank of snow; the maze and laughter of the 
Frangaise ; Miss Martin’s slim, straight figure as he pushed 
her before him. He did not try to control these details, nor 
was he conscious of a mental effort; they stood out for an 
instant, as vivid sensations, then glided by, to make room for 
others. But, as he let them pass, he became aware that be- 
low them, in depths of his mind he had believed undisturbed, 
there was present a feeling of strange unhappiness, which he 
did not know the cause of: these sharp pictures resembled an 
attempt on the part of his mind, to deceive him as to what was 
really going on in him. But he did not want to know, and he 
allowed his thoughts to take wider flights: recalling the scheme 
Madeleine had proposed, he considered it with a clearness of 
view, which, at the time, had been impossible. From this, he 
turned to America itself, and reflected on the opportunities 
the country offered. He saw the two of them sweeping 
through vast tracts of uncultivated land, in a train that outdid 
all real trains in swiftness ; saw unknown tropical places, 
where the yellow fruit hung low and heavy, and people walked 
shadeless, sandy roads, in white hats, under white umbrellas. 
He saw Madeleine and himself on the awning-spanned deck 
of an ocean steamer, anchoring in a harbour where the sea 
was the colour of turquoise, touched to sapphire where the 
mountains came down to the shore. 

“ Moping herself to death ” : the phrase crystallised in his 
brain with such suddenness that he said it aloud. Now he 
knew what it was that was troubling him. He had not con- 
sciously recalled the words, nor had they even made a very 
incisive impression on him at the time; but they had evidently 
lain dormant, now to return and to strike him, as if no 
others had been said. He explained to himself what they 

279 


28 o 


MAURICE GUEST 


meant. It was this: outside, in the crisp, stinging air, people 
lived and moved, busy with many matters, or sported, as he 
and his companions had done that evening: inside, she sat 
alone, mournful, forsaken. He saw her in the dark sofa- 
corner, with her head on her hands. Day passed and night 
passed, but she was always in the same place; and her head 
was bowed so low that her white fingers were lost in the 
waves of her hair. He saw her thus with the distinctness of a 
vision, and except in this way could not see her at all. 

He felt it little short of shameful that he should have care- 
lessly amused himself; and, as always where she was con- 
cerned, a deep, unreasoning sense of his own unworthiness 
filled him. He demanded of himself, with a new energy, what 
he could do to help her. Fantastic plans rose as usual in 
his mind, and as usual were dismissed. For the one thing he 
was determined not to do, was to thrust himself on her un- 
called. Her solitude was of her own choosing, and no one had 
the right to break in upon it. It was perhaps her way of 
doing penance; and, at this thought, he felt a thrill of satis- 
faction. 

At night, he consoled himself that things would seem dif- 
ferent in the morning; but when he wakened from a restless 
sleep, crowded with dreams one more grotesque than another, 
he was still prone to be gloomy. He could think more clearly 
by daylight — that was all: his pitying sympathy for her had 
only increased. It interfered with everything he did, just as 
it had formerly done — just in the old way. And he had been 
on the brink of believing himself grown indifferent, and 
stronger in common sense. Fool that he was! Only a word 
was needed to bring his card-house down. The placidity of 
the past weeks had been a mere coating of thin ice, which had 
given way beneath the first test. A distrust of himself took 
him, a distrust so deep that it amounted to aversion; for in his 
present state of mind he discerned only a despicable weakness. 
But though he was thus bewildered at his own inconsistency, 
he was still assured that he would not approach Louise — not, 
that is, unless she sent for him. So much control he still had 
over his actions : and he went so far as to make his staying away 
a touchstone of his stability. This, too, although reason told 
him the end of it all would be, that Louise would actually leave 
Leipzig, without sending for him, or even remembering his 
existence. 

He worked steadily enough. A skilled observer might have 


MAURICE GUEST 


281 


remarked a slight contraction of the corners of his mouth; 
none of his friends, however, noticed anything, with the ex- 
ception of Madeleine, and all she said was: “You look so 
cross sometimes. Is anything the matter? ” 

Late one afternoon, they were on the ice as usual. While 
Madeleine talked to Dickensey, Maurice practised beside them. 
In making a particularly complicated gyration, he all but 
overbalanced himself, and his cap fell on the ice. As he was 
brushing the snow off it, he chanced to raise his eyes. A 
number of people were standing on the wooden bridge, watch- 
ing the skaters ; to the front, some children climbed and pushed 
on the wooden railing. His eye was ranging carelessly over 
them, when he started so violently that he again let his cap drop. 
He picked it up, threw another hasty look at the bridge, then 
turned and skated some distance away, where he could see 
without being seen. Yes, he had not been mistaken; it was 
Louise; he recognised her although a fur hat almost covered 
her hair. She was gazing down, with an intentness he knew 
in her; one hand rested on the parapet. And then, as he 
looked, his blood seemed to congeal: she was not alone; he 
saw her turn and speak to some one behind her. For a moment 
things swam before him. Then, a blind curiosity drove him 
forward to find out whom she spoke to. People moved on the 
bridge, obstructing his view, then several went away, and 
there was no further hindrance to his seeing: her companion 
was the shabby little Englishman, of doubtful reputation, with 
whom he had met her once or twice that summer. He felt 
himself grow cold. But now that he had certainty, his chief 
idea was to prevent the others from knowing, too; he grew 
sick at the thought of Madeleine’s sharp comments, and Dick- 
ensey ’s cynicism. Rejoining them, he insisted — so imperiously 
that Madeleine showed surprise — on their skating with him 
on the further pond ; and he kept them going round and round 
without a pause. 

When the bridge was empty, and he had made sure that 
Louise was not standing anywhere about the edge of the ice, he 
left his companions, and, without explanation, crossed to the 
benches and took off his skates. He did not, however, go 
home; he went into the Scheibenholz, and from there along 
outlying roads till he reached the river; and then, screwing 
on his skates again, he struck out with his face to the wind. 
Dusk was falling; at first he met some skaters making for 
home; but these were few, and he soon left them behind. 


282 


MAURICE GUEST 


When the state of the ice did not allow of his skating further, 
he plunged into the woods again, beyond Connewitz, tumbling 
in his haste, tripping over snow-bound roots, sinking knee- 
deep in the soft snow. His endeavour was to exhaust himself. 
If he sat at home now, before this fever was out of him, he 
might be tempted to knock his head against the wall of his 
room. Movement, space, air — plenty of air! — that was what 
he needed. 

Hitherto, he had been surprised at his own conduct; now he 
was aghast: the hot rush of jealousy that had swept through 
him at the sight of the couple on the bridge, was a revelation 
even to himself. His previous feelings had been those of a 
child compared with this — a mere weak revolt against the 
inevitable. But what had now happened was not inevitable; 
that was the sting of it: it was a violent chance-effect. And 
his distress was so keen that, for the first time, she, too, had to 
bear her share of blame. He said jeeringly to himself, that, 
quixotic as ever, he had held aloof from her, leaving her in 
solitude to an atonement of his own imagining; and mean- 
while, some one who was not troubled by foolish ideals stepped 
in and took his place. For it was his place; he could not rid 
himself of that belief. If anyone had a right to be at her side 
it was he, unless, indeed, all that he had undergone on her 
behalf during the past months counted for nothing. 

Of course this Eggis was an unscrupulous fellow; but it 
was just such men as this — he might note that for future use 
— who won where others lost. At the same time, he shrank 
from the idea of imitating him; and even had he been bold 
enough, not a single errand could he devise to serve him as an 
excuse. He could not go to her and say: I come because I 
have seen you with some one else. And yet that would be 
the truth; and it would lurk beneath all he said. 

The days of_ anxiety that followed were hard to bear. He 
dreaded every street-corner, for fear Louise and the other 
should turn it; dreaded raising his eyes to the bridges over the 
ice; and was so irritable in temper that Madeleine suggested 
he should go to Dresden in the Christmas holidays, for change 
of air. 

For, over all this, Christmas had come down — the season 
of gift-making, and glittering Christmas trees, of Bowie , 
Stollen, and Honigkuchen. For a fortnight beforehand, the 
open squares and places were set out with fir-trees of all sizes 
— their pungent fragrance met one at every turn — the shops 


MAURICE GUEST 


283 

were ablaze till late evening, crowded with eagerly seeking 
purchasers; the streets were impassible for the masses of coun- 
try people that thronged them. Every one carried brown paper 
parcels, and was in a hurry. As the time drew near, sub- 
ordinates and officials grew noticeably polite; the very house- 
porter touched his cap at your approach. Bakers’ shops were 
piled high with W eihnachtsstollen , which were a special mark 
of the festival: cakes shaped like torpedoes, whose sugared, 
almonded coats brisked brown and tempting. But the spicy 
scent of the firs was the motive that recurred most persist- 
ently: it clung even to the stairways of the houses. 

Maurice had assisted Madeleine with her circumstantial 
shopping; and, at dusk on Christmas Eve, he helped her to 
carry her parcels to the house of some German friends. He 
himself was invited to Miss Jensen’s, where a party of English 
and Americans would celebrate the evening in their own 
fashion; but not till eight o’clock. When he had picked out 
at a confectioner’s, a Torte for the Fiirsts, he did not know 
how to kill time. He was in an unsettled mood, and the 
atmosphere of excitement, which had penetrated the familiar 
details of life, jarred on him. It seemed absurdly childish, the 
way in which even the grown-up part of the population sur- 
rendered itself to the sentimental pleasures of the season. But 
foreigners were only big children; or, at least, they could lay 
aside age and dignity at will. He felt misanthropic, and went 
for a long walk; and when he had passed the last tree-market, 
where poor buyers were bargaining for the poor trees that were 
left, he met only isolated stragglers. In some houses, the trees 
were already lighted. 

On his return, he went to a flower-shop in the Konigsplatz , 
and chose an azalea to take to Miss Jensen. While he was 
waiting for the pot to be swathed in crimped paper, his eye 
was caught by a large bunch of red and yellow roses, which 
stood in a vase at the back of the counter. He regarded them 
for a moment, without conscious thought; then, suddenly col- 
ouring, he streched out his hand. 

“ I’ll take those roses, too. What do they cost? ” 

The girl who served him — a very pretty girl, with plaits 
of straw-coloured hair, wound Madonna-like round her head 
— named a sum that seemed exorbitant to his inexperience, and 
told a wordy story of how they had been ordered, and then 
countermanded at the last moment. 

“A pity. Such fine flowers!” 


MAURICE GUEST 


284 

Her interest was awakened in the rather shabby young man, 
who paid the price without flinching; and she threw inquisitive 
looks at him as she wrapped the roses in tissue-paper. 

A moment later, Maurice was in the street with the flowers 
in his hand. He had acted so spontaneously that he now be- 
lieved his mind to have been made up before he entered the 
shop; no, more, as if all that had happened during the past 
week had led straight up to his impulsive action. Or was it 
only that, at the sight of the flowers, a kind of refrain had 
begun to run through his head: she loves roses, loves roses? 

But he did not give himself time for reflection; he hurried 
through the cold night air, sheltering the flowers under his 
coat. Soon he was once more in the Briiderstrasse , on the 
stair, every step of which, though he had only climbed it some 
three or four times, he seemed to know by heart. As, however, 
he waited for the door to be opened, his heart misgave him; he 
was not sure how she would regard his gift, and, in a burst 
of cowardice, he resolved just to hand in the roses, with- 
out even leaving his name. But his first ring remained un- 
answered, and before he rang again, he had time to be afraid 
she would not be at home — a simple, but disappointing solu- 
tion. 

There was another pause. Then he heard sounds, steps 
came along the passage, and the door was opened by Louise 
herself. 

He was so unprepared for this that he could not collect his 
wits; he thrust the flowers into her hand, with a few stam- 
mered words, and his foot was on the stair before she could 
make a movement to stop him. 

Louise had peered out from the darkness of the passage to 
the dusk of the landing, with the air of one roused from sleep. 
She looked from him to the roses in her hand, and back at him. 
He tried to say something else, raised his hat, and was about 
to go. But, when she saw this, she impulsively stepped towards 
him. 

“Are they for me?” she asked. And added: “Will you 
not come in? Please, come in.” 

At the sound of her voice, Maurice came back from the 
stair-head. But it was not possible for him to stay: friends — 
engaged — a promise of long standing. 

“ Ah then ... of course.” She retreated into the shadow 
of the doorway. “ But I am quite alone. There is no one in 
but me,” 


MAURICE GUEST 


285 

“Why, however does that happen?” Maurice asked 
quickly, and was ready at once to be wrath wdth all the world. 
He paused irresolute, with his hand on the banisters. 

“ I said I didn’t mind. But it is lonely.” 

“ I should think it was. — On this night of all others, too.” 

He followed her down the passage. In the room there was 
no light except what played on the walls from the street- 
lamps, the blinds being still undrawn. She had been sitting 
in the dark. Now, she took the globe off the lamp, and would 
have lighted it, but she could not find matches. 

“ Let me do it,” said Maurice, taking out his own ; and, 
over the head of this trifling service, he had a feeling of in- 
tense satisfaction. By the light that was cast on the table, he 
watched her free the roses from their paper, and raise them to 
her face. She did not mention them again, but it was ample 
thanks to see her touch several of them singly, as she put them 
in a jug of water. 

But this done, they sat on opposite sides of the table, and 
had nothing to say to each other. After each banal observa- 
tion he made came a heart-rending pause; she let a subject 
drop as soon as it was broached. It was over two months now 
since Maurice had seen her, and he was startled by the change 
that had taken place in her. Her face seemed to have grown 
longer; and there were hollows in the fine oval of the cheeks, 
in consequence of which the nose looked larger, and more 
pinched. The chin-lines were sharpened, the eyes more sunken, 
while the shadows beneath them were as dark as though they 
were plastered on with bistre. But it was chiefly the expres- 
sion of the face that had altered: the lifelessness of the eyes 
was new to it, and the firm compression of the mouth: now, 
when she smiled, no thin line of white appeared, such as he 
had been used to watch for. 

Even more marked than this, though, was the change that 
had taken place in her manner. He had known her as passion- 
ately self-assertive; and he could not now accustom himself to 
the condition of apathy in which he found her. “ Moping to 
death ” had been no exaggeration ; help was needed here, and at 
once, if she were not to be irretrievably injured. 

As he thought these things, he talked at random. There 
were not many topics, however, that could be touched on with 
impunity, and he returned more than once to the ice and the 
skating, as offering a kind of neutral ground, on which he 
was safe. And Louise listened, and sometimes assented; but 


286 


MAURICE GUEST 


her look was that of one who listens to the affairs of another 
world. Could she not be persuaded to join them on the 
J ohannateich, he was asking her. What matter though she 
did not skate! It was easily learned. Madeleine had been a 
beginner that winter, and now seldom missed an afternoon. 

“ Oh, if Madeleine is there, I should not go,” she said with 
a touch of the old arrogance. 

Then he told her of the frozen river, with its long, lonely, 
grey-white reaches. Her eyes kindled at this, he fancied, and 
in her answer was more of herself. “ I have never trodden 
on ice in my life. Oh, I should be afraid — horribly afraid ! ” 

For those who did not skate there were chairs, he urged — 
big, green-painted, sledge-like chairs, which ran smoothly. The 
ice was many inches thick; there was not the least need to be 
afraid. 

But she only smiled, and did not answer. 

“Then I can’t persuade you?” he asked, and was annoyed 
at his own powerlessness. She can go with Eggis, he told 
himself, and simultaneously spoke out the thought. “ I saw 
you on the bridge the other day.” 

But if he had imagined this would rouse her, he was wrong. 

“Yes?” she said indifferently, and with that laming want 
of curiosity which prevents a subject from being followed up. 

They sat in silence for some seconds. With her fingers, she 
pulled at the fringe of the tablecloth. Then, all of a sudden 
rising from her chair, she went over to the jug of roses, which 
she had placed on the writing-table, bent over the flowers with 
a kind of perceptible hesitation, and as suddenly came back to 
her seat. 

“ Suppose we went to-night.” she said, and for the first time 
looked hard at Maurice. 

“To-night?” he had echoed, before he could check himself. 

“Ah yes — I forgot. You are going out.” 

“ That’s the least of it,” he answered, and stood up, fearful 
lest she should sink back into her former listlessness. “ But 
it’s Christmas Eve. There wouldn’t be a soul on the river 
but ourselves. Are you sure you would like it ? ” 

“ Just for that reason,” she replied, and wound her hand- 
kerchief in and out of her hands, so afraid was she now that 
he would refuse. “ I could be ready in five minutes.” 

With his brain in a whirl, Maurice went back to the flower- 
shop, and, having written a few words of apology on a card, 
ordered this to be sent with his purchase to Miss Jensen. 


MAURICE GUEST 


287 

When he returned, Louise was ready. But he was not satis- 
fied : she did not know how cold it would be : and he made her 
put on a heavy jacket under her fur cape, and take a silk shawl, 
in which, if necessary, she could muffle up her head. He him- 
self carried a travelling-rug for her knees. 

“As if we were going on a journey!” she said, as she 
obeyed him. Her eyes shone with a spark of their old light, 
in approval of the adventurous nature of their undertaking. 

The hard-frozen streets, over which a cutting wind drove, 
were deserted. In many windows, the golden glory of the 
Christbaum was visible; the steep blackness of the houses was 
splashed with patches of light. At intervals, a belated holiday- 
maker was still to be met with hurrying townwards: only they 
two were leaving the town, and its innocent revels, behind 
them. Maurice had a somewhat guilty feeling about the whole 
affair: they also belonged by rights to the town to-night. 
He was aware, too, of a vague anxiety, which he could not 
repress; and these feelings successfully prevented him taking 
an undue pleasure in what was happening to him. He had 
swung his skates, fetched in passing, over his shoulder; and 
they walked as quickly as the slippery snow permitted. Louise 
had not spoken since leaving the house; she also stood mutely 
by, while the astonished boatman, knocked out in the middle 
of his festivities, unlocked the boat-shed where the ice-chairs 
were kept. The Christmas punch had made him merry; he 
multiplied words, and was even a little facetious at their ex- 
pense. According to him, a snow-storm was imminent, and 
he warned them not to be late in returning. 

Maurice helped Louise into the chair, and wrapped the rug 
round her. If she were really afraid, as she had asserted, she 
did not show it. Even after they had started, she re- 
mained as silent as before; indeed, on looking back, Maurice 
thought they had not exchanged a word all the way to Conne- 
witz. He pushed in a kind of dream; the wind was with 
them, and it was comparatively easy work; but the ice was 
rough, and too hard, and there were seamy cracks to be avoided. 
The snow had drifted into huge piles at the sides; and, as they 
advanced, it lay unswept on their track. It was a hazily bright 
night, but rapid clouds were passing. Not a creature was to 
be seen: had a rift opened in the ice, and had they two gone 
through it, the mystery of their disappearance would never have 
been solved. 

Slight, upright, unfathomable as the night, Louise sat be- 


288 


MAURICE GUEST 


fore him. What her thoughts were on this fantastic journey, 
he never knew, nor just what secret nerve in her was satisfied 
by it. By leaning sideways, he could see that her eyes were 
fixed on the grey-white stretch to be travelled: her warm 
breath came back to him; and the coil of her hair, with its 
piquant odour, was so close that, by bending, he could have 
touched it with his lips. But he was still in too detached a 
mood to be happy; he felt, throughout, as if all this were hap- 
pening to some one else, not to him. 

At their journey’s end, he helped her, cold and stiff, along 
the snowy path to the Waldcafe. In a corner of the big room, 
which was empty, they sat beside the stove, before cups of 
steaming coffee. The landlady served them herself, and looked 
with the same curious interest as the boatman at the forlorn 
pair. 

Louise had laid her fur cap aside with her other wraps, and 
had drawn off her gloves; and now she sat with her hand prop- 
ping her chin. She was still disinclined to speak; from the ex- 
pression of her eyes, Maurice judged that her thought were very 
far away. Sitting opposite her, he shaded his own eyes with 
his hand, and scrutinised her closely. In the stronger light of 
this room, he could see more plainly than before the havoc 
trouble had made of her face. And yet, in spite of the shadows 
that had descended on it, it was still to him the most adorable 
face in the world. He could not analyse his feelings any bet- 
ter now than in the beginning; but this face had exactly the 
same effect upon him now as then. It seemed to be a matter 
of the nerves. Nor was it the face alone: it was also the lines 
of throat and chin, when she turned her head; it was the ges- 
ture with which she fingered the knot of hair on her neck; 
above all, her hands, whose every movement was full of mean- 
ing: yes, these things sent answering ripples through him, as 
sound does through air. 

He had stared too openly: she felt his eyes, and raised her 
own. For a few seconds, they looked at each other. Then 
she held out her hand. 

“ You are my friend.” 

He pressed it, without replying; he could not think of any- 
thing suitable to say; what rose to his lips was too emotional, 
too tell-tale. But he made a vow that, from this day on, she 
should never doubt the truth of what she said. 

“You are my friend.” 

He would take care of her as no one had ever yet tried to 


MAURICE GUEST 


289 

do. She might safely give herself into his charge. The unob- 
trusive aid that was mingled tenderness and respect, should 
always be hers. 

“Are you warmer now?” 

He could not altogether suppress the new note that had got 
into his voice. All strangeness seemed to have been swept 
away between them; he was wide-awake to the fact that he 
was sitting alone with her, apart from the rest of the world. 

He looked at his watch: it was time to go; but she begged 
for a little longer, and so they sat on for another half-hour, 
in the warm and drowsy stillness. 

Outside, they found a leaden sky; and they had not gone 
far before snow began to fall: great flakes came flying to 
them, smiting their faces, stinging their eyes, melting on their 
lips. The wind was against them; they were exposed to the 
full force of the blizzard. Maurice pushed till he panted; but 
their progress was slow. At intervals, he stopped, to shake the 
snow off the rug, and to enwrap Louise afresh; and each 
violent gust that met him when he turned a corner, smote him 
doubly; for he pictured to himself the fury with which it must 
hurl itself against her, sitting motionless before it. 

It took them twice as long to return; and when Louise tried 
to get out of the chair, she found herself so paralysed with 
cold that she could hardly stand. Blinded by the snow, she 
clung to Maurice’s arm; he heard her teeth chatter, as they 
toiled their way along the Arndtstrasse, through the thick, new 
snow-layer. Not a droschke was to be seen; and they were 
half-way home before they met one. The driver was drunk 
or asleep, and had first to be roused. Louise sank limply into 
a corner. 

The cab slithered and slipped over the dangerous roads, 
jolting them from side to side. Maurice had laid the rug 
across her knees, and she had ceased to shiver. But, by the 
light of a street-lamp which they passed, he was dismayed to 
see that tears were running down her cheeks. 

“What is it? Are you so cold? — Just a little patience. 
We shall soon be there.” 

He took her hand, and chafed it. At this, she began to cry. 
He did not know how to comfort her, and looked out of the 
window, scanning each house they passed, to see if it were 
not the last. She was still crying when the cab drew up. 
The house-key had been forgotten; there was nothing for it 
but to ring for the landlady, and to stand in the wind till she 


290 


MAURICE GUEST 


came down. The old woman was not so astonished as Maurice 
had expected; but she was very wroth at the folly of the pro- 
ceeding, and did not scruple to say so. 

“So J ne Dummheit, so } ne Dummheit! ” she mumbled, as, 
between them, they got Louise up the stairs; and she treated 
Maurice’s advice concerning cordials and hot drinks with scant 
courtesy. 

" Ja, ja — jawohl! ” she sniffed. And, on the landing, the 
door was shut in his face. 


VIII 


What she needed, what she had always needed, was a friend, 
he said to himself. She had never had anyone to stand by her 
and advise her to wisdom, in the matter of impulsive acts and 
wishes. He would be that friend. He had not, it was true, 
made a very happy beginning, with the expedition that had 
ended so unfortunately; but he promised himself not to be led 
into an indiscretion of the kind again. It was a friend’s part 
to warn in due time, and to point out the possible consequences 
of a rash act. He only excused his behaviour because he had 
not seen her for over two months, and had felt too sorry for 
her to refuse the first thing she asked of him. But from now 
on, he would be firm. He would win her back to life — re- 
awaken her interest in what was going on around her. He 
would devote himself to serving her: not selfishly, as others had 
done, with their own ends in view; the gentle, steady aid 
should be hers, which he had always longed to give her. He 
felt strong enough to face any contingency: it seemed, indeed, 
as if his love for her had all along been aiming at this issue; 
as if each of the unhappy hours he had spent, since first meet- 
ing her, was made up for by the words: “ You are my friend.” 

A deep sense of responsibility filled him. In obedience, how- 
ever, to a puritanic streak in his nature, he hedged himself 
round with restrictions, lest he should believe he was setting 
out on all too primrose a path. He erected limiting boun- 
daries, which were not to be overstepped. For example, on 
the two days that followed the memorable Christmas Eve, he 
only made inquiries at the door after Louise, and when he 
learned that the cold she had caught was better, did not re- 
turn. For, on one point, his mind was made up: idle tongues 
should have no fresh cause for gossip. 

At the expiry of a fortnight, however, he began to fear that 
if he remained away any longer, she would think him indif- 
ferent to her offer of friendship. So, late one afternoon, he 
called to see her. But when he was face to face with her, he 
doubted whether she had given him a thought in the interval: 
she seemed mildly surprised at his coming. It was even possible 
that she had forgotten, by now, what she had said to him ; and 

291 


29a MAURICE GUEST 

he sought anew for a means of impressing himself on her con- 
sciousness. 

She was crouched in the rocking-chair, close beside the stove, 
and was wrapped in a thick woollen shawl; but the hand she 
gave him was as cold as stone. She was trying to keep warm, 
she said; she had not been properly warm since the night on 
the ice. 

“ But there’s an easy remedy for that,” said Maurice, who 
came in ruddy from the sharp air. “ You must go out and 
walk. Then you will soon get warm.” 

But she shuddered at the suggestion, and also made an ex- 
pressive gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress — 
the soiled dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned 
forward again, holding both hands, palms out, to the mica 
pane in the door of the stove, through which the red coals 
glowed. 

“ If only winter were over! ” 

He gazed at the expressive lines of hand and wrist, and was 
reminded of an adoring Madonna he had somewhere seen en- 
graved : her hands were held back in the same way ; the thumbs 
slightly thrown out, the three long fingers together, the little 
one apart: here as there, was the same supple, passionate in- 
dolence. But he could find no more to say than on the occa- 
sion of his former visit; she did not help him; and more and 
more did it seem to the young man as if the words he had 
gone about hugging to him, had never been spoken. After a 
desperate quarter of an hour, he rose to take leave. But simul- 
taneously, she, too, got up from the rocking-chair, and, stand- 
ing pale and uncertain before him, asked him if she might 
trouble him to do something for her. A box had been sent to 
her from England, she told him, while she tumbled over the 
dusty letters and papers accumulated on the writing-table, and 
had been lying unclaimed at the custom-house for several weeks 
now — how many she did not know, and she spread out her 
fingers, with a funny little movement, to show her ignorance. 
She had only remembered it a day or two ago ; the dues would 
no doubt be considerable. If it were not too much trouble . . . 
she would be so grateful; she would rather ask him than Mr. 
Eggis. 

“ I should be delighted,” said Maurice. 

He went the next morning, at nine o’clock, spent a trying 
hour with uncivil officials, and, in the afternoon, called to 
report to Louise. As he was saying good-bye to her, he in- 


MAURICE GUEST 


293 


quired if there were nothing else of a similar nature he could 
do for her; he was glad to be of use. Smiling, Louise ad- 
mitted that there were other things, many of them, more than 
he would have patience for. She should try him and see, said 
Maurice, and laid his hat down again, to hear what they 
were. 

As a consequence of this, the following days saw him on 
various commissions in different quarters of the town, scanning 
the names of shops, searching for streets he did not know. 
But matters did not always run smoothly; complications arose, 
for instance, over a paid bill that had been sent in a second 
time, and over an earlier one that had not been paid at all; 
and Maurice was forced to confess his ignorance of the cir- 
cumstances. When this had happened more than once, he sat 
down, with her consent, at the writing-table, to work through 
the mass of papers, and the contents of a couple of drawers. 

In doing this, he became acquainted with some of the more 
intimate details of her life — minute and troublesome details, 
for which she had no aptitude. From her seat at the stove, 
Louise watched him sorting and reckoning, and she was as 
grateful to him as it was possible for her to be, in her present 
mood. No one had ever done a thing of the kind for her 
before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a stranger, 
who had his hands thus in her private life. When, horrified 
beyond measure at the confusion that reigned in all belonging 
to her, Maurice asked her how she had ever succeeded in keep- 
ing order, she told him that, before her illness, there had, now 
and again, come a day of strength and purpose, on which she 
had had the “ courage ” to face these distasteful trifles and to 
end them. But she did not believe such a day would ever 
come again. 

Bills, bills, bills: dozens of bills, of varying dates, sent in 
once, twice, three times, and invariably tossed aside and for- 
gotten — a mode of proceeding incomprehensible to Maurice, 
who had never bought anything on credit in his life. And not 
because she was in want of money: there were plenty of gold 
pieces jingling loose in a drawer; but from an aversion, which 
was almost an inability, to take in what the figures meant. And 
the amounts added up to alarming totals; Maurice had no idea 
what a woman’s dress cost, and could only stand amazed ; but 
the sum spent on fruit and flowers alone, in two months, repre- 
sented to his eyes a small fortune. Then there was the Bliith- 
ner, the unused piano; the hire of it had not been paid since 


294 


MAURICE GUEST 


the previous summer. Three terms were owed at Klemm’s 
musical library, from which no music was now borrowed; fees 
were still being charged against her at the Conservatorium, 
where she had given no formal notice of leaving. It really 
did not matter, she said, with that carelessness concerning 
money, which was characteristic of her; but it went against 
the grain in Maurice to let several pounds be lost for want of 
an effort; and he spent a diplomatic half-hour with the secre- 
taries in the Bureau , getting her released from paying the whole 
of the term that had now begun. As, however, she would 
not appear personally, she was under the necessity of writing 
a letter, stating that she had left the Conservatorium; and 
when she had promised twice to do it, and it was still un- 
written, Maurice stood over her, and dictated the words into 
her pen. A day or two afterwards, he prevailed upon her 
to do the same for Schwarz, to inform him of her illness, and 
to say that, at Easter, if she were better, she would come to 
him for a course of private lessons. This was an idea of Mau- 
rice’s own, and Louise looked up at him before putting down 
the words. 

“ It’s not true. But if you think I should say so — it doesn’t 
matter.” 

This was the burden of all she said : nothing mattered, noth- 
ing would ever matter again. There was not the least need 
for the half-jesting tone in which Maurice clothed his air of 
authority. She obeyed him blindly, doing what he bade her 
without question, glad to be subordinate to his will. As long 
as he did not ask her to think or to feel,, or to stir from her 
chair beside the stove. 

But it was only with regard to small practical things; in 
matters of more importance she was not to be moved. And 
the day came, only too soon, when the positive help Maurice 
could give her was at an end; she did not owe a pfennig to 
anyone ; her letters and accounts were filed and in order. Then 
she seemed to elude him again. He did what lay in his power: 
brought her books that she did not read, brought news and scraps 
of chit-chat, which he thought might interest her and which did 
not, and an endless store of sympathy. But to all he said and 
did, she made the same response: it did not matter. 

Since the night on the river, she had not set foot across the 
threshold of her room; nervous fears beset her. Maurice was 
bent on her going out into the open air; he also wished her 
to mix with people again, and thus rid herself of the morbid 


MAURICE GUEST 


295 


fancies that were creeping on her. But she shrank as he spoke 
of it, and pressed both hands to her face: it was too cold, she 
murmured, and too cheerless; and then the streets! ... the 
publicity of the streets, the noise, the people! This was what 
she said to him; to herself she added: and all the old familiar 
places, to each of which a memory was attached! He spent 
hours in urging her to take up some regular occupation; it 
would be her salvation, he believed, and, not allowing him- 
self to be discouraged, he returned to the attack, day after day. 
But she only smiled the thin smile with which she defeated 
most of his proposals for her good. Work? — what had she to 
do with work? It had never been anything to her but a nar- 
cotic, enabling her to get through those hours of the day in 
which she was alone. 

She let Maurice talk on, and hardly heard what he said. 
He meant well, but he did not understand. No one under- 
stood. No one but herself knew the weight of the burden she 
had borne since the day when her happiness was mercilessly 
destroyed. Now she could not raise a finger to help herself. 
On waking, in the morning, she turned with loathing from 
the new day. In the semi-darkness of the room, she lay mo- 
tionless, half sleeping, or dreaming with open eyes. The clock 
ticked benumbingly the long hours away; the wind howled, 
or the wind was still; snow fell, or it was frostily clear; but 
nothing happened — nothing at all. The day was well ad- 
vanced before she left her bed for the seat by the stove; there 
she brooded until she dragged herself back to bed. One day 
was the exact counterpart of another. 

The only break in the deathlike monotony was Maurice’s 
visit. He came in, fresh, and eager to see her; he held her 
hand and said kind things to her; he talked persuasively, and 
she listened or not, as she felt disposed. But little though he 
was able to touch her, she unconsciously began to look to his 
visits; and one day, when he was detained and could not come, 
she was aware of a feeling of injury at his absence. 

As time went by, however, Maurice felt more and more 
clearly that he was making no headway. His uneasiness in- 
creased ; for her want of spirit had something about it that he 
could not understand. It began to look to him like a some- 
what morbid indulgence in grief. 

“ This can’t go on,” he said sternly. 

She was in one of her most pitiable moods; for there were 
gradations in her unhappiness, as he had learned to know. 


MAURICE GUEST 


296 

“This can’t go on. You are killing yourself by inches— * 
and I’m a party to it.” 

For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his 
manner. To his surprise, Louise raised her head, raised it 
quickly, as he had not seen her make a movement for weeks. 

“By inches? Inches only? Oh, I am so strong . . . Noth- 
ing hurts me. Nothing is of any use.” 

“If you look in the glass, you will see that you’re, hurting 
yourself considerably.” 

“You mean that I’m getting old? — and ugly?” she caught 
him up. “ Do you think I care? — Oh, if I had only had the 
courage, that day! A few grains of something, and it would 
have been all over, long ago. But I wasn’t brave enough. 
And now I have no more courage in me than strength in my 
little finger.” 

Maurice looked meditatively at her, without replying: this 
was the single occasion on which she had been roused to a 
retort of any kind ; and, bitter though her words were, he could 
not prevent the spark of hope which, by their means, was lit 
in him. 

And from this day on, things went forward of themselves. 
Again and again, some harmless observation on his part drew 
forth a caustic reply from her; it was as if, having once ex- 
perienced it, she found an outcry of this kind a relief to her 
surcharged nerves. At first, what she said was directed chiefly 
against herself — this self for which she now nursed a fanatic 
hatred, since it had failed her in her need. But, little by 
little, he, too, was drawn within the circle of her bitterness; 
indeed, it sometimes seemed as if his very kindness incited her, 
by laying her under an obligation to him, which it was in her 
nature to resent: at others, again, as if she merely wished to 
try him, to see how far she might go. 

“Do I really deserve that thrust?” he once could not 
help asking. Pie smiled, as he spoke, to take the edge off his 
words. 

Louise threw a penitent glance at him, and, for all answer, 
held out her hand. 

But, the very next day, after a similar incident, she crossed 
the room to him, with the swiftness of movement that was 
always disturbing in her, contrasting as it did with her cus- 
tomary indolence. “ Forgive me. I ought not to. And you 
are the only friend I have. But there’s so much I must say 
to some one. If I don’t say it, I shall go mad.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


297 

11 Why, of course. That’s what I’m here for,” said Mau- 
rice. 

And so it went on — a strange state of things, in which he 
never called her by her name, and seldom touched her hand. 
He had himself well under control — except for the moment 
immediately before he saw her, and the moment after. He 
could not yet meet her, after the briefest absence, unmoved. 

For a week on end that penetrating rawness had been 
abroad, which precedes and accompanies a thaw; and one day, 
early in February, when, after the unequalled severity of the 
winter, the air seemed of an incredible mildness, the thaw was 
there in earnest; on the ice of more than three months’ stand- 
ing, pools of water had formed overnight. By the Johanna - 
teichj Maurice and Madeleine stood looking dubiously across 
the bank of snow, which, here and there, had already col- 
lapsed, leaving miniature crater-rings, flecked with moisture. 
Several people who could not tear themselves away, were still 
flying about the ice, dexterously avoiding the watery places; 
and Dove and pretty Susie Fay called out to them that it was 
better than it looked. But Maurice was fastidious and Made- 
leine indifferent; she was really rather tired of skating, she 
admitted, as they walked home, and was ashamed to think of 
the time she had wasted on it. As, however, this particular 
afternoon was already broken into, she would have been glad 
to go for a walk; but Maurice did not take up her suggestion, 
and parted from her at her house-door. 

“ Spring is in the air,” he sought to tempt Louise, when, 
a few minutes later, he entered her room. 

She, too, had been aware of the change; for it had aggra- 
vated her dejection. She raised her eyes to his like a tired 
child, and had not strength enough to make her usual stand 
against him. Oh, if he really wished it so much, she would 
go out, she said at last. And so he left her to dress, and ran 
to the Conservatorium, arriving just in time for a class. 

Later on, a curious uneasiness drew him back to see how 
she had fared. It was almost dark, but she had not returned; 
and he waited for half an hour before he heard her step in 
the hall. Directly she came in, he knew that something was 
the matter. 

In each of her movements was a concentrated, but noiseless 
energy: she shut the door after her as if it were never to open 
again; tore off rather than unpinned the thick black veil in 


MAURICE GUEST 


298 

which she had shrouded herself; threw her hat on the sofa, 
furs and jacket to the hat; then stood motionless, pressing her 
handkerchief to her lips. Her face had emerged from its 
wrappings with renewed pallor; her eyes shone as if with bella- 
donna. She took no notice of the silent figure in the corner, 
did not even look in his direction. 

“You’ve got back,” said Maurice, for the sake of saying 
something. “ It’s late.” 

At his words, she dropped on a chair, put her arms on the 
table, and hid her face in them. 

“What’s the matter? Has anything happened?” he asked, 
in quick alarm, as she burst into violent sobs. He should have 
been accustomed to her way of crying by this time — it sounded 
worse than it was, as he knew — but it invariably racked him 
anew.^ He stood over her; but the only comfort he ventured 
on was to lay his hand on her hair — this wild black hair, which 
met his fingers springily, with a will of its own. 

“ What is the matter? ” he besought her. “ Tell me, Louise 
— tell me what it is.” 

He had to ask several times before he received an answer. 
Finally, she sobbed in a muffled voice, without raising her head : 
“ How could you make me go out ! Oh, how could you ! ” 

“ What do you mean ? I don’t understand. What is it ? ” 
He had visions of her being annoyed or insulted. 

But she only repeated : “ How could you ! Oh, it was cruel 
of you! ” and wept afresh. 

Word by word, Maurice drew her story from her. There was 
not very much to tell. 

She had gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet 
by-streets to the Rosental. But before she had advanced a 
hundred yards, her courage began to fail, and the further 
she went, the more her spirits sank. Her surroundings were 
indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily retreating snow 
was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had concealed 
— all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, 
streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly 
the people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, oft 
which the soft white coating had slid ; their contours were as 
painful to see. And the mud — oh, God, the mud! It spread 
itself over every inch of the way; the roads were rivers of 
filth, which spattered and splashed ; at the sides of the streets, 
the slush was being swept into beds. Before she had gone any 
distance, her boots and skirts were heavy with it; and she 


MAURICE GUEST 


299 


hated mud, she sobbed — hated it, loathed it, it affected her 
with a physical disgust — and this he might have known when 
he sent her out. In the Rosental, it was no better; the paths 
were so soaked that they squashed under her feet ; on both sides, 
lay layers of rotten leaves from the autumn ; the trees were only 
a net-work of blackened twigs, their trunks surrounded by an 
undergrowth that was as ragged as unkempt hair. And every- 
thing was mouldering: the smell of moist, earthy decay re- 
minded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but her- 
self. She sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, 
and the past rose before her with resistless force: the intensity 
of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, 
her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of 
a piece with the desolation around her, and which would never 
again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman. — How 
long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did not know. But 
all of a sudden she started up, frightened both by her wretched 
thoughts and by the loneliness of the wood; and she fled, 
not looking behind her, or pausing to take breath, till she reached 
the streets. Into the first empty droschke she met, she had 
sunk exhausted, and been driven home. 

It was of no use trying to reason with her, or to console 
her. 

“ I can’t bear my life,” she sobbed. “ It’s too hard . . . 
and there is no one to help me. If I had done anything to 
deserve it . . . then it would be different . . . then I shouldn’t 
complain. But I didn’t — didn’t do anything — unless it was 
that I cared too much. At least it was a mistake — a dreadful 
mistake. I should never have shown him how I cared: I 
should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a 
fool. I flung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he 
should get tired of me. The wonder was that I held him so 
long. But, oh, how can one care as I did, and yet be able to 
plot and plan? I couldn’t. It isn’t in me to do it.” 

She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched 
arms. When she raised it again, her tear-stained face looked 
out, Medusa-like, from its setting of ruffled hair. More to her- 
self than to the young man, as if, on this day, secret springs 
had been touched in her, she continued with terse disconnected- 
ness: “I couldn’t believe it; I wouldn’t — even when I heard 
it from his own lips. You thought, all of you, that I was ill; 
but I wasn’t; I was only trying to get used to the terrible 
thought — just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to 


300 


MAURICE GUEST 


being always in the dark. And while I was still struggling 
came Madeleine, with her cruel tongue, and told me — you know 
what she told me. Oh, if his leaving me had been hard to bear, 
this stung like scorpions. I wonder I didn’t go mad. I should 
have, if you hadn’t come to help me. For a day and night, I 
did not move from the corner of that sofa there. I turned her 
words over till there was no sense left in them. My nails cut 
my palms.” • 

Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her 
whole attitude betrayed the tension at which she was speaking. 
“ Oh, my God, how I hated him . . . hated him . . . how 
I hate him still! If I live to be an old, old woman, I shall 
never forgive him. For, in time, I might have learnt to bear 
his leaving me, if it had only been his work that took him 
from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at 
least only a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But 
that all the time he should have been deceiving me, taking 
pains to do it — that I cannot forgive. At first, I implored, I 
prayed there might be some mistake : you, too, told me there was. 
And I hoped against hope — till I saw her. Then, I knew it 
was true — as plainly as if it had been written on that wall.” 
She paused for breath, in this bitter pleasure of laying her 
heart bare. ‘‘For I wasn’t the person he could always have 
been satisfied with — I see it now. He liked a woman to be fair, 
and soft, and gentle — not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only 
a phase, a fancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn’t have 
lasted for ever. But all I asked of him was common honesty — 
to be open with me: it wasn’t much to ask, was it? Not more 
than we expect of a stranger in the street. But it was too 
much for him, all the same. And so . . . now ... I have 
nothing left to remind me that I ever knew him. That night, 
when I had seen her, I burned everything — every photograph, 
every scrap of writing I had- ever had from him ... if only 
one could burn memories too! I had to tear my heart over it; 
I used to think I felt it bleeding, drop by drop. For all the 
suffering fell on me, who had done nothing. He went free.” 

“ Are you sure of that? It may have been hard for him, too 
— harder than you think.” Maurice was looking out of the 
window, and did not turn. 

She shook her head. “ The person who cares, can’t scheme 
and contrive. He didn’t care. He never really cared for me — 
only for himself; at heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid 
for it all — I who hate and shrink from pain, who would do 


MAURICE GUEST 301 

anything to avoid it. I want to go through life knowing only 
what is bright and happy; and time and again, I am crushed 
and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven’t suffered like this. 
And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear 
his name again, and why I shall never — not if I live to be a 
hundred years old — never forgive him. It isn’t in me to do 
it. As a child, I ground my heel into a rose if it pricked me.” 

There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair 
back from forehead. “ I don’t know why I should say all this 
to you,” she said contritely. “ But often, just with you, I seem 
to forget what I am saying. It must be, I think, because you’re 
so quiet yourself.” 

At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. “ No, it’s 
for another reason. You need to say these things to some one. 
You have brooded over them to yourself till they are magnified 
out of all proportion. It’s the best thing in the world for you 
to say them aloud.” He drew up a chair, and sat down beside 
her. “ Listen to me. You told me once, not very long ago, that 
I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to you to-night as 
that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well. Will you 
not go away from here, for a time ? — -go away and be with peo- 
ple who know nothing of . . . all this — people you don’t need 
to be afraid of? Let yourself be persuaded. You have such 
a healthy nature. Give it a chance.” 

She looked at him with a listless forbearance. “ Don’t go 
on. I know everything you are going to say. — That’s always 
the way with you calm, quiet people, who are not easily moved 
yourselves. You still I>ut faith in these trite remedies; for 
you’ve never known the ills they’re supposed to cure.” 

“ Never mind me. It’s you we have to think of. And I want 
you to give my old-fashioned remedy a trial.” 

But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, 
before she stretched out her hand to him. “ Forget what I’ve 
said to-night. I shall never speak of it again. — But then you, 
too, must promise not to make me go out alone — to think and 
remember — in all the dirt and ugliness of the streets.” 

And Maurice promised. 


IX 


The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, 
was to him summed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence 
of the man he despised above all others. Only at isolated mo- 
ments was he content with the part he played; it was wholly 
unlike what he had intended. He had wished to be friend and 
mentor to her, and he was now both ; but nevertheless, there was 
something wrong about his position. It seemed as if he had at 
first been satisfied with too low a place in her esteem, ever to 
allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious that in 
her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he 
tormented himself with such a question as: should a new crisis 
in her life arise, would she, now that she knows you, turn to 
you? And in moments of despondency he answered no. He 
felt the tolerance that lurked in her regard for him. Kindness 
and care on his part were not enough. 

None of his friends had an idea of what was going on. No 
one he knew lived in the neighbourhood of the Briiderstrasse; 
and, the skating at an end, he was free to spend his time as he 
chose. When another brief nip of frost occurred, he alleged 
pressure of work, and did not take advantage of it. 

Then, early one morning, Dove paid him a visit, with a list 
in his hand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaint- 
ances had not seen much of Dove; for he had been in close 
attendance on the pretty little American, who made no scruple 
of exacting his services. Now, after some preamble, it came out 
that he wished to include Maurice in a list of mutual friends, 
who were clubbing to give a ball — a “ Bachelors’ Ball,” Dove 
called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for the tickets, and to 
invite the ladies. But Maurice, vexed at the interruption, made 
it clear that he had neither time nor inclination for an affair 
of this kind: he did not care a rap for dancing. And after 
doing his best to persuade him, and talking round the matter 
for half an hour, Dove said he did not of course wish to press 
anyone against his will, and departed to disturb other people. 

Maurice had also to stand fire from Madeleine; for she had 
counted on his inviting her. She was first incredulous, then 

302 


MAURICE GUEST 


303 


offended, at his refusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argu- 
ment — 'that he did not own a dress-suit. If that was all, she 
knew a shop in the Bruhl, where such things could be hired for 
a song. 

Maurice now thought the matter closed. Not many days 
later, however, Dove appeared again, with a crestfallen air. 
He had still over a dozen tickets on his hands, and, at the low 
price fixed, unless all were sold, the expenses of the evening 
would not be covered. In order to get rid of him, Maurice 
bought a ticket, on the condition that he was not expected to 
use it, and also suggested some fresh people Dove might try; 
so that the latter went off with renewed courage on his dis- 
agreeable errand. 

Maurice mentioned the incident to Louise that evening, as 
he mentioned any trifle he thought might interest her. He sat 
on the edge of his chair, and did not mean to stay; for he had 
found her on the sofa with a headache. 

So far, she had listened to him with scant attention; but at 
this, she raised her eyebrows. 

“Then you don’t care for dancing?” — she could hardly be- 
lieve it. 

He repeated the words he had used to Dove. 

She smiled faintly, looking beyond him, at a sombre patch 
of sky. 

“ I should think not. If it were me! ” She raised her 

hand, and considered her fingers. 

“ If it were you? ■ — yes? ” 

But she did not continue. 

It had been almost a spring day: that, no doubt, accounted 
for her headache. Maurice made a movement to rise. But 
Louise turned quickly on her side, and, in her own intense way, 
said: “Listen. You have the ticket, you say? Use it, and 
take me with you. Will you?” 

He smiled as at the whim of a child. But she was in earnest. 

“ Will you?” 

“ No, of course not.” 

He tempered his answer with the same smile. But she was 
not pleased — he saw that. Her nostrils tightened, and then 
dilated, as they had a way of doing when she was annoyed. 
For some time after, she did not speak. 

But the very next day, when he was remonstrating with her 
over some small duty which she had no inclination to perform, 
she turned on him with an unreasonable irritation. “ You only 


304 


MAURICE GUEST 


want me to do disagreeable things. Anything that is pleasant, 
you set yourself against.” 

It took him a minute to grasp that she was referring to what 
he had said the evening before. 

“ Yes, but then ... I didn’t think you were in earnest.” 

“ Am I in the habit of saying things I don’t mean ? And 
haven’t you said yourself that I am killing myself, shut up in 
here? — -that I must go out and mix with people? Very well, 
here is my chance.” 

He kept silence: he did not know whether she was not 
mainly inspired by a spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid 
of inciting her, by resistance, to say something she would be 
unable to retract. “ I don’t think you’ve given the matter suf- 
ficient thought,” he said at last. “ It can’t be decided off- 
hand.” 

She was angry, even more with herself than with him. “ Oh, 
I know what you mean. You think I shall be looked askance 
at. As if it mattered what people say! All my life I haven’t 
cared, and I shall not begin now, when I have less reason than 
ever before.” 

He did not press the subject ; he hoped she would change her 
mind, and thus render further discussion unnecessary. But this 
was not the case ; she clung to the idea, and was deaf to reason. 
To a certain extent, he could feel for her; but he was too 
troubled by the thought of unpleasant possibilities, not to en- 
deavour to persuade her against it: he knew, as she did not, 
how unkindly she had been spoken of; and he was not sure 
whether her declared bravado was strong enough to sustain 
her. But the more he reasoned, the more determined she was 
to have her own way; and she took his efforts in very bad 
part. 

“ You pretend to be solicitous about me,” she said one after- 
noon, from her seat by the fire. “ Yet when a chance of diver- 
sion comes you begrudge it to me. You would rather I mould- 
ered on here.” 

“ That’s not generous of you. It is only you I am thinking 
of — in all this ridiculous affair.” 

The word stung her. “ Ridiculous? How dare you say 
that! I’m still young, am I not? And I have blood in my 
veins, not water. Well, I want to feel it. For months now, 
I have been walled up in this tomb. Now I want to live. 
Not — do you understand? — to go out alone, on a filthy day, 
with no companion but my own thoughts. I want to dance — to 


MAURICE GUEST 


305 

forget myself — with light and music. It’s the most natural 
thing in the world. Anyone but you would think so.” 

“ It is not life you mean ; it’s excitement.” 

“ What it means is that you don’t want to take me. — Y es, 
that’s what it is. But I can get some one else. I will send for 
Eggis; he will have no objection.” 

“Why drag in that cad’s name? You know very well if 
you do go, it will be with me, and no one else.” 

A slight estrangement grew up between them. Maurice was 
hurt: she had shown too openly the small value she set on his 
opinion. In addition to this, he was disagreeably affected by 
her craving for excitement at any cost. To his mind, there 
was more than a touch of impropriety in the proceeding; it was 
just as if a mourner of a few months’ standing should suddenly 
discard his mourning, and with it all the other decencies of 
grief. 

She had not been entirely wrong in accusing him of unreadi- 
ness to accompany her. When he pictured to himself the aston- 
ished faces of his friends, he found it impossible to look forward 
to the event with composure. He saw now that it would have 
been better to make no secret of his friendship with Louise; 
so harmless was it that every one he knew might have assisted 
at it ; but now, the very abruptness of its disclosure would put 
it in a bad light. Through Dove, he noised it abroad that he 
would probably be present at the ball after all ; but he shunned 
Madeleine with due precaution, and could not bring himself 
even to hint who his companion might be. In his heart, he still 
thought it possible that Louise might change her mind at the 
last moment — take fright in the end, at what she might have 
to face. 

But the night came, and this had not happened. While he 
dressed himself in the hired suit, which was too large here, too 
small there, he laid a plan of action for the evening. Since it 
had to be gone through with, it must be carried off in a high- 
handed way. He would do what he could to make her presence 
in the hall seem natural ; he would be attentive, without devot- 
ing himself wholly to her; and he would induce her to leave 
early. 

He called for her at eight o’clock. The landlady said that 
Fraulein was not quite ready, and told him to wait in the pas- 
sage. But the door of the room was ajar, and Louise herself 
called to him to come in. 

It was comparatively dark; for she had the lamp behind the 


MAURICE GUEST 


306 

screen, where he heard her moving about. Her skirts rustled; 
drawers and cupboards were pulled noisily open. Then she 
came out, with the lamp in her hand. 

Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, 
and made a step forward, to take the lamp from her. But 
after one swift, startled glance, he drew back, colouring fu- 
riously. For a moment he could not collect himself: his heart 
seemed to have leapt into his throat, and there to be hammer- 
ing so hard that he had no voice with which to answer her 
greeting. 

Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with 
himself, he had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in 
evening dress. Another thing was, he had never seen Louise 
in any but street-dress, or the loose dressing-gown. Now 
he called himself a fool and absurd; this was how she was 
obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it was perfectly 
decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural, over- 
strained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to 
him that all dresses were not like this one ; also that every girl 
was not of a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common 
things of life seen poor and stale. 

Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its sur- 
face, as if it were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, 
and out behind her on the floor. But this was only the sheath, 
from which rose the whiteness of her arms and shoulders, and 
the full column of her throat, on which the black head looked 
small. Until now, he had seen her bared wrist — no more. 
Now the only break on the long arm was a band of black velvet, 
which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity of the skin, 
and served in place of a sleeve. 

Strange thoughts coursed through the young man’s mind. 
His first impulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar 
room it did not seem fitting to see her dressed so differently from 
the way he had always known her. Before, however, he had fol- 
lowed this sensation to an end, he made himself the spontaneous 
avowal that, until now, he had never really seen her. He had 
known and treasured her face — her face alone. Now he became 
aware that to the beautiful head belonged also a beautiful body, 
that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful and desirable. 
And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful reflection : 
others besides himself would make a similar observation ; she 
was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this 
struck him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could 


MAURICE GUEST 


307 

have gone down on his knees to her, to implore her to stay at 
home. 

Unconscious of his embarrassment, Louise had gone to the 
console-glass; and there, with the lamp held first above her 
head, then placed on the console-table, she critically examined 
her appearance. As if dissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the 
side of her hair, and considered the effect; she took a powder- 
puff, and patted cheeks and neck with powder. Next she 
picked up a narrow band of velvet, on which a small star was 
set, and put it round her throat. But the clasp would not meet 
behind, and, having tried several times in vain to fasten it, she 
gave an impatient exclamation. 

“ I can’t get it in.” 

As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the 
room with the thing in her hand. During the few seconds she 
was absent, the young man racked his brain to invent telling 
reasons which would induce her not to go; but when she re- 
turned, slightly flushed at the landlady’s ready flattery, she was 
still so engrossed in herself, and so unmindful of him, that he 
recognised once more his utter powerlessness. He only half 
existed for her this evening: her manner w T as as different as her 
dress. 

She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her 
feet in fur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Mau- 
rice found nothing to say as they went. But she did not notice 
his silence ; there was a suppressed excitement in her very walk ; 
and she breathed in the cold, crisp air with open lips and nos- 
trils, like a wild animal. 

“ Oh, how glad I am I came ! I might still have been sitting 
in that dull room — when I haven’t danced for years — and when 
I love it so ! ” 

“ I can’t understand you caring about it,” he said, and the few 
words contained all his bitterness. 

“ That is only because you don’t know me,” she retorted, and 
laughed. “ Dancing is a passion with me. I have dance- 
rhythms in my blood, I think. — My mother was a dancer.” 

He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new 
images ran riot in his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said 
no more. 

They were late in arriving ; dancing had already begun ; the 
cloak-rooms were black with coats and mantles. In the narrow 
passage that divided the rooms, two Englishmen were putting 
on their gloves. As Maurice changed his shoes, close to the door, 


MAURICE GUEST 


308 

he overheard one of these men say excitedly: “By Jove, there’s 
a pair of shoulders! Who the deuce is it? ” 

Maurice knew the speaker by sight : he was a medical student, 
named Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his 
skill as a skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a 
bunch of violets in his buttonhole. 

“ You haven’t been here long enough, old man, or you 
wouldn’t need to ask,” answered his companion. Then he 
dropped his voice, and made a somewhat disparaging remark — 
not so low, however, but what the listener was forced to hear 
it, too. 

Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clat- 
tered his chair, Herries persisted, with an Englishman’s su- 
preme indifference to the bystander: “ Do you think she can 
dance? ” 

“ Can’t tell. Looks a trifle heavy.” 

“Well, I’ll risk it. Come on. Let’s get some one to in- 
troduce us.” 

The blood had rushed to Maurice’s head and buzzed there: 
another second, and he would have stepped out and confronted 
the speaker. But the incident had passed like a flash. And it 
was better so : it w r ould have been a poor service to her, to begin 
the evening with an unpleasantness. Besides, was this not what 
he had been bracing himself to expect? He looked stealthily 
over at Louise; considering the proximity of the rooms, it was 
probable that she, too, had overheard the derogatory words. 
But when she had put on her gloves, she took his arm without a 
trace of discomfiture. 

They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped un- 
noticed into the train of those who promenaded. But they had 
not gone once round, when they were the observed of all eyes; 
although he looked straight in front of him, Maurice could see 
the astonished eyebrows and open mouths that greeted their ad- 
vance. At one end of the hall was an immense mirror: he saw 
that Louise, who was flushed, held her head high, and talked to 
him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she made him take 
her round a second time; and after the third, which was a 
solitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to 
the mirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, 
and, on learning that she had no programme, the latter ran 
off to fetch one. Before he returned, a third man had joined 
them, and soon she was the centre of a little circle. Herries, 
having returned with the programme, would not give it up 


MAURICE GUEST 


309 


until he had put his initials opposite several dances. Louise 
only smiled — a rather artificial smile that had been on her lips 
since she entered the hall. 

Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind 
the group. Once Louise turned her head, and raised her eye- 
brows interrogatively ; but a feeling that was mingled pride and 
dismay restrained him ; and as, even when the choosing of dances 
was over, he did not come forward, she walked down the hall on 
Herries’s arm. The musicians began to tune; Dove, as master 
of ceremonies, was flying about, with his hands in gloves that 
were too large for him ; people ranged themselves for the lancers 
in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight for a moment of the 
couple he was watching. As soon as the dance began, however, 
he saw them again ; they were waltzing to the Franqaise, at the 
lower end of the hall. 

He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, 
by hearing some one behind him say, in an angry whisper: “ I 
call it positively horrid of her to come.” It was Susie Fay 
who spoke; through some oversight, she had not been asked 
to dance. Moving slowly along, behind the couples that began 
a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm, and, looking round, saw 
Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts, and invited him 
to a seat beside her. But he remained standing. 

“You don’t care for dancing?” she queried. And, when he 
had replied: “Well, say, now, Mr. Guest, — we are all dying 
to know — however have you gotten Louise Dufrayer along here 
this evening? It’s the queerest thing out.” 

“ Indeed ? ” said the young man drily. 

“ Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all 
presumed she was perfectly inconsolable — thinking only of an- 
other world. That’s so. And then you work a miracle, and 
out she pops, fit as can be.” 

“ I persuaded her . . . for the sake of variety,” mumbled 
Maurice. 

Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen 
did not heed his meek reminder that this was their dance. 

“ That was excessively kind of you,” said the big woman, and 
looked at Maurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. “ And no 
doubt, Louise is most grateful. She seems to be enjoying her- 
self. — Keep quiet, Fauvre, do, till I am ready. — But I don’t like 
her dress. It’s a lovely goods, and no mistake. But it ain’t 
suitable for a little hop like this. It’s too much.” 

“ How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business.” 


3io 


MAURICE GUEST 


“Well, maybe not. — Now, Fauvre, come along” — she called 
it “ Fover.” “ I reckon you think you’ve waited long enough.” 

Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Made- 
leine’s voice in his ear. She had made her way to him 
alone. 

“ For goodness’ sake, pull yourself together,” she said cut- 
tingly. “ Every one in the hall can see what’s the matter with 
you.” 

Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner — 
one of the few Germans scattered through this Anglo-American 
gathering. “ Is zat your brozzer? ” Maurice heard him ask as 
they moved away. Fie watched them dancing together, and 
found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine, tall and angular, 
the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time to time they 
stopped, to allow him to wipe his face. 

Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet 
room beyond. But as he was edging forward, he ran into 
Dove’s arms, and that was the end of it. Dove, it seemed, had 
had his eye on him. The originator of the ball confessed that 
he was not having a particularly good time; he had everything 
to superintend — the dances, the musicians, the arrangements for 
supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen too many 
ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given 
their tickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. 
So far, Dove had been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and 
he was hot and impatient. 

“ Besides, I’ve routed half a dozen men out of the billiard- 
room, more than once,” he complained irrelevantly, wiping the 

moisture from his brow. “ But it’s of no Now just look at 

that ! ” he interrupted himself. “ The ’cellist has had too much 
to drink already, and they’re handing him more beer. Another 
glass, and he won’t be able to play at all. — I say, you’re not 
dancing. My dear fellow, it really won’t do. You must help 
me with some of these women.” 

Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of 
the hall where sat two little provincial English sisters, looking 
hopeless and forlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible 
to say; but no one wished to dance with them. They were 
dressed exactly alike, were alike in face, too — as like as two 
nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed to them. Their hair was 
of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and they wore brown 
dresses. He led them out to dance, one after the other, and 
they were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i i 

tell them apart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one 
back to her seat, the other sat waiting for her turn. 

In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, 
and he was not slow to catch the looks — cynical, contemptuous, 
amused — that were directed at him. Some were disposed to 
wink, and to call him a sly dog ; others found food for malicious 
gossip in the way Louise had deserted him; and, when he met 
Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed his advances with a 
definiteness that left no room for doubt. 

Round dances succeeded to square dances ; the musicians’ play- 
ing grew more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were 
crushed. An Englishman or two ran about complaining of the 
ventilation. As often as Maurice saw Louise, she was with 
Herries. At first, she had at least made a feint of dancing with 
other people; now she openly showed her preference. Always 
this dapper little man, with the violets and the simpering smile. 

They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in par- 
ticular, gave herself up to the rhythm of the music with an 
abandon not often to be seen in a ball-room. Something of the 
professional about it, said Maurice to himself as he watched her ; 
and, in his own estimation, this was the hardest thought he had 
yet had of her. 

At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose bird- 
like chatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the 
nerves of one who is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring 
himself to answer civilly. At the further end of the table, on 
the same side as he, sat Louise. She was with those who had 
been her partners during the evening. They were drinking 
champagne, and were very lively. Maurice could not see her 
face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his ears. 

Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that 
the sisters had generously introduced him to a friend. But when 
the first dance was over, Maurice abruptly excused himself to 
his surprised partner, and made his way out of the hall. 

At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; 
and deserters were again knocking balls about the green cloth 
of the billiard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight 
of stairs that led to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery 
was in semi-darkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one 
on top of the other; but the two front rows had been left stand- 
ing, from the last concert held in the building, and here, two 
or three couples were sitting out the dance. He went into the 
extreme corner, where it was darkest. 


312 


MAURICE GUEST 


At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with 
girls he did not care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. 
He was free to be as wretched as he chose, and he availed himself 
unreservedly of the chance. It was not only the personal slight 
Louise had put upon him throughout the evening, making use of 
him, as it were, to the very door, and then throwing him off: 
but that she could be attracted by a mere waxen prettiness, 
and well-fitting clothes — for the first time, distrust of her was 
added to his hurt amazement. 

He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few 
minutes, when the door he had entered by reopened, and a 
couple came down the steps to the corner where he was sitting. 

“ Oh, there’s some one there ! ” cried Louise at the sight of 
the dark figure. “ Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing 
here? ” 

“ Sssh ! ” said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice 
should carry too far. 

“ Yes. It’s me,” said Maurice stiffly, and rose. “ But I’m 
going. I shan’t disturb you.” 

“ Disturb? ” she said, and laughed a little. “ Nonsense! Of 
course not.” From her position on Herries’s arm, she looked 
down at him, uncertain how to proceed. Then she laughed again. 
“ But how fortunate that I found you ! The next is our dance, 
isn’t it? ” — she pretended to examine her programme. “ It will 
begin in a minute. I think I’ll wait here.” 

“ The next may be, but not the next again, remember,” 
said Herries, before he allowed her to withdraw her arm. Louise 
nodded and laughed. “ Auf Wiedersehen!” 

But after the door had closed behind Herries, she remained 
standing, a step higher than Maurice, tipping her face with her 
handkerchief. 

When she descended the step, and was on a level with him, he 
could see how her eyes glittered. 

“ Was that lie necessary? — for me? ” 

“What’s the matter, Maurice? Why are you like this? 
Why have you not asked me to dance? ” 

He was unpleasantly worked on by her free use of his name. 

“ I, you? Have I had a chance? ” 

“ Wasn’t it for you to make the chance? Or did you expect 
me to come to you: Mr. Guest, will you do me the honour of 
dancing with me? — Oh, please, don’t be cross. Don’t spoil my 
pleasure — for this one night at least.” 

But she laughed again as she spoke, as though she did not fear 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i3 


his power to do so, and laid her hand on his arm: and, at her 
touch, he seemed to feel through sleeve and glove, the super- 
abundance of vitality that was throbbing in her this evening. 
She was unable to be still for a moment; in the delicate pallor 
of her face, her eyes burned, black as jet. 

“ Are you really enjoying yourself so much? What can you 
find in it all? ” 

“ Come — come down and dance. Listen! — can you resist 

that music? Quick, let us go down.” 

“ I dance badly. I’m not Herries.” 

“ But I can suit my step to anyone’s. Won’t you dance with 
me ? — when I ask you ? ” 

She had been leaning forward, looking over the balustrade at 
the couples arranging themselves below. Now she turned, and 
put her arm through his. 

They went down the stairs, into the hall. Close beside the 
door at which they entered, they began to dance. 

In all these months, Maurice had scarcely touched her hand. 
Now convention required that he should take her in his arms: 
he had complete control over her, could draw her closer, or 
put her further away, as he chose. For the first round or two, 
this was enough to occupy him entirely: the proximity of the 
lithe body, the nearness of the dark head, the firm, warm resist- 
ance that her back offered to his hand. 

They were dancing to the music of the Wiener Blut, most 
melancholy gay of waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward 
sweep of the violins says as plainly as in words that all is vanity. 
But with the passing of the players to the second theme, the 
melody made a more direct appeal: there was a passionate un- 
rest in it, which disquieted all who heard if. The dancers, with 
flushed cheeks and fixed eyes, responded instinctively to its chal- 
lenge: the lapidary swing with which they followed the rhythm 
became less circumspect; and a desire to dance till they could 
dance no more, took possession of those who were fanatic. No 
one yielded to the impulse more readily than Louise; she was 
quite carried away. Maurice felt the change in her; an un- 
easiness seized him, and increased with every turn. She had all 
but closed her eyes; her hair brushed his shoulder; she answered 
to the lightest pressure of his arm. Even her face looked strange 
to him: its expression, its individuality, all that made it hers, 
was as if wiped out. Involuntarily he straightened himself, and 
his own movements grew stiffer, in his effort to impart to her 
some of his own restraint. But it was useless. And, as they 


3H 


MAURICE GUEST 


turned and turned, to the maddening music, cold spots broke 
out on his forehead : in this manner she had danced with all her 
previous partners, and would dance with those to come. Such 
a pang of jealousy shot through him at the thought that, with- 
out knowing what he was doing, he pulled her sharply to him. 
And she yielded to the tightened embrace as a matter of course. 

With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her. 

She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far 
away, in a world of melody and motion, and could not come 
back to herself all at once. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice ; 
for the music was going on, and no one else had left off dancing ; 
and, with the same of comprehension, but still too dazed to resist, 
she followed him up the stairs. 

“ It’s easy to see you don’t care for dancing,” she said, when 
they were back in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came 
unsteadily, and again she touched her face with the small, 
scented handkerchief. 

“ No. Not dancing like that,” he answered rudely. But 
now again, as so often before, directly it was put into words, his 
feeling seemed strained and puritanic. 

Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face. 

“ Like what ? — what do you mean ? Oh, you foolish boy, 
what is the matter with you to-night? You will tell me next I 
can’t dance.” 

“ You dance only too well.” 

“ But you would rather I was a wooden doll — is that it ? 
How is one to please you? First you are vexed with me because 
you did not ask me to dance; and when I send my partner away, 
on your account, you won’t finish one dance with me, but exact 
that I shall sit here, in a dark corner, and let that glorious music 
go by. I don’t know what to make of you.” But her attention 
had already wandered to the dancers below. “ Look at them! — 
Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt of stopping yet. 
For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when you dance 
you don’t feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must 
go on, too, though it lasted all night. — Oh, how often I have 
longed for a night like this! And then I’ve never met a better 
dancer than Mr. Herries.” 

^ “ And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a 
puppy he is ? ” 

“ Puppy? ” At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, 
the low, indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed de- 
termined, on this night, to keep anything from touching her 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i5 


too nearly. “ How crude you men are! Because he is hand- 
some and dances well, you reason that he must necessarily be a 
simpleton.” 

“ Handsome? Yes — if a tailor’s dummy is handsome.” 

But Louise only laughed again, like one over whom words 
had no power. “If he were the veriest scarecrow, I would 
forgive him — for the sake of his dancing.” 

She leant forward, letting her gloved arms lie along her 
knees; and above the jet-trimmed line of her bodice, he saw her 
white chest rise and fall. At a slight sound behind, she turned 
and looked expectantly at the door. 

“ No, not yet,” said the young man at her side. “ Besides, 
even if it were, this is my dance, remember. You said so your- 
self.” 

“ You are rude to-night, Maurice — and langweilig.” She 
averted her face, and tapped her foot. But the content that 
lapped her made it impossible for her to take anything earnestly 
amiss, and even that others should show displeasure jarred on 
her like a false note. 

“ Don’t be angry. To-morrow it will all be different again. 
Let me have just this one night of pleasure — let me enjoy my- 
self in my own way.” 

“ To hear you talk, one would think I had no wish but to 
spoil your pleasure.” 

“ Oh, I didn’t mean that. You misunderstand everything.” 

“ What I say or think has surely no weight with you ? ” 

She gave up the attempt to pacify him, and leaning back in 
her chair, stifled a yawn. Then with an exclamation of : “ How 
hot it is up here ! ” she peeled off her gloves. With her freed 
hands, she tidied her hair, drawing out and thrusting in again 
the silver dagger that held the coil together. Then she let her 
bare arms fall on her lap, where they lay in strong outline 
against the black of her dress. One was almost directly under 
Maurice’s eyes; even by the poor light, he could see the mark 
left on the inside of the wrist, by the buttons of the glove. It 
was a generously formed arm, but so long that it looked slender, 
and its firm white roundness was flawless from wrist to shoulder. 
He shut his eyes, but he could see it through his eyelids. Sitting 
beside her like this, in the semi-darkness, morbidly aware of the 
perfume of her hair and dress, he suddenly forgot that he had 
been rude, and she indifferent. He was conscious only of the 
wish to drive it home to her, how unhappy she was making him. 

“ Louise,” he said so abruptly that she started. “ I’m going 


3i6 


MAURICE GUEST 


to ask you to do something for me. I haven’t made many de- 
mands, have I? — since you first called me your friend.” He 
paused and fumbled for words. “ Don’t — don’t dance any more 
to-night. Don’t dance again.” 

She stooped forward to look at him. “Not dance again? — 
I ? What do you mean ? ” 

“ What I say. Let us go home.” 

“Home? Now? When it’s only half over? — You don’t 
know what you are saying.” But her surprise was already on 
the wane. 

“ Oh, yes, I do. I’m not going to let you dance again.” 

She laughed, in spite of herself, at the new light in which he 
was showing himself. But, the moment after, she ceased to 
laugh ; for, with an audacity he had not believed himself capable 
of, Maurice took the arm that was lying next him, and, midway 
between wrist and elbow, put his lips to it, kissing it several 
times, in different places. 

Taken unawares, Louise was helpless. Then she freed her- 
self, ungently. “ No, no, I won’t have it. Oh, how can you 
be so foolish! My gloves — where is my glove? Pick it up, and 
give it to me — at once!” 

He groped on the dusty floor; the veins in his forehead ham- 
mered. She had moved to a distance, and now stood busy with 
the gloves ; she would not look at him. 

In the uneasy silence that ensued, Herries opened the door: 
a moment later, they went out together. Maurice remained 
standing until he saw them appear below. Then he dropped 
back into his seat, and covered his face with his hands. 

He did not regret what he had done; he did not care in the 
least, whether he had made her angry with him or not. On the 
contrary, the feeling he experienced was akin to relief: disap- 
proval and mortification, jealousy and powerlessness — all the 
varying emotions of the evening — had found vent and allevia- 
tion in the few hastily snatched kisses. He no longer felt 
injured by her treatment of him: that hardly seemed to concern 
him now. His sensations, at this minute, resolved themselves 
into the words: “ She is mine, she is mine! ” which went round 
and round in his brain. And then, in a sudden burst of clear- 
ness, he understood what it meant for him to say this. It meant 
that the farce of friendship, at which he had played, was at an 
end ; it meant that he loved her — not as hitherto, with a touch 
of elegiac resignation — but with a violence that made him afraid. 
It seemed incredible to him now that he had spent two months 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i7 


in close fellowship with her: it was ludicrous, inhuman. For 
he now saw, that his ultimate desire had been neither to help 
her nor to restore her to life — that was a comedy he had acted 
for the benefit of the traditions in his blood. Brutally, at this 
moment, he acknowledged that he had only wished to hear her 
voice and to touch her hand: to make for himself so indispen- 
sable a place among the necessities of her life that no one could 
oust him from it. — Mine — mine! Instinct alone spoke in him 
to-night — that same blunt instinct which had reared its head the 
first time he saw her, but which, until now, he had kept under, 
like a medieval ascetic. No reason came to his aid; he neither 
looked into the future nor did he consider the past: he only 
swore to himself in a kind of stubborn wrath that she was his, 
and that no earthly power should take her from him. 

One by one the slow-dragging hours wore away. The dancers’ 
ranks were thinned ; but those who remained, gyrated as 
insensately as ever. There was an air of greater freedom over 
the ball-room. The chaperons who, earlier in the evening, had 
sat patiently on the red velvet sofas, had vanished with their 
charges, and, in their train, the more sedate of the company: it 
was past three o’clock, and now, every few minutes, a cloaked 
couple crossed a corner of the hall to the street-door. 

When Maurice went downstairs, he could not find Louise, 
and some time elapsed before she and Herries emerged from the 
supper-room. Although the lines beneath her eyes were like 
rings of hammered iron, she danced anew, went on to the very 
end, with a few other infatuated people. Finally, the tired 
musicians rose stiffly to pack their instruments; and, with a sigh 
of exhaustion, she received on her shoulders the cloak Maurice 
stood holding. 

They were among the last to leave the hall ; the lights went 
out behind them. Herries walked a part of the way home with 
them, and talked much and idly — -ineffable in his self-conceit, 
thought Maurice. But Louise urged him on, saying wild, dis- 
connected things, as if, as long as words were spoken, it did 
not matter what they were. Again and again her laugh re- 
sounded : it was hoarse, and did not ring true. 

“ She has had too much champagne,” Maurice said to him- 
self, as he walked silent at her side. 

In the Rossplatz, Herries, who was in a becoming fur cap, 
and a coat with a fur-lined collar, took a circumstantial leave of 
her. He raised both her hands to his lips. 

“ To the memory of those divine waltzes — our waltzes ! ” he 


3 1 8 MAURICE GUEST 

said sentimentally. “ And to all the others the future has in 
store for us ! ” 

She left her hands in his, and smiled at him. 

“ Till to-morrow then,” said Herries. “ Or shall you forget 
your promise ? ” 

“ It is you who will forget — not I.” 

After this, Maurice and she walked on alone together. It 
was that dreariest of all the hours between sunset and dawn, 
when it is scarcely night any longer, and yet not nearly day. The 
crisp frost of the previous evening had given place to a bleak 
rawness ; the day that was coming would crawl in, lugubriously, 
unable to get the better of the darkness. The houses about them 
were wrapped in sleep; they two were the only people abroad, 
and their footsteps echoed in the damp streets. But, for once, 
Louise was not affected by the gloom of her surroundings. She 
walked swiftly, and her chief aim seemed to be to render any 
but the most trival words impossible. Now, however, her 
strained gaiety had the aspect of a fever; Maurice believed that, 
for the most part, she did not know what she was saying. 

Until they stood in front of the house-door, she kept up the 
tension. But when the young man had fitted the key in the 
lock and turned it, she looked at him, and, for the first time 
this night, gave him her full attention. 

“ Good night — my friend ! ” 

She was leaning against the woodwork; beneath the lace 
scarf, her eyes were bent on him with a strange expression. 
Maurice looked down into them, and, for a second or two, held 
them with his own, in one of those looks which are not for or- 
dinary use between a man and a woman. Louise shivered under 
it, and gave a nervous laugh ; the next moment, she made a slight 
movement towards him, an involuntary movement, which was 
so imperceptible as to be hardly more than an easing of her 
position against the doorway, and yet was unmistakable — as 
unmistakable as was the little upward motion with which she 
resigned herself at the outset of a dance. For an instant, his 
heart stopped beating; in a flash he knew that this was the 
solution: there was only one ending to this night of longing 
and excitement, and that was to take her in his arms, as she 
stood, to hold her to him in an infinite embrace, till his own 
nerves were stilled, and the madness had gone from her. But 
the returning beat of his blood brought the knowledge that a 
morrow must surely come — a morrow for both of them — a 
cold, grey day to be faced and borne. She was not herself, 


MAURICE GUEST 


3i9 

in the bonds of her unnatural excitement; it was for him to 
be wise. 

He took her limply hanging hand, and looked at her gravely 
and kindly. 

“ You are very tired.” 

At his voice, the wild light died out of her eyes; she seemed 
to shrink into herself. “Yes, very tired. And oh, so cold! ” 

“ Can’t you get a cup of tea? — something to warm you? ” 

But she did not hear him ; she was already on the stair. He 
waited till her steps had died away, then went headlong down 
the street. But, when he came to think things over, he did not 
pride himself on the self-control he had displayed. On the 
contrary, he was tormented by the wish to know what she would 
have said or done had he yielded to his impulse; and, for the 
remainder of the night, his brain lost itself in a maze of haz- 
ardous conjecture. Only when day broke, a cheerless February 
day, was he satisfied that he could not have acted differently. 

Upstairs, in her room, Louise lay face downwards on her bed, 
and there, her arms thrown wildly out over the pillows, all the 
froth and intoxication of the evening gone from her — there lay, 
and wished she were dead. 

***** 

Three days later, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, Mau- 
rice watched the train that carried her from him steam out of the 
Dresdener Bahnhof. 

The clearness he had gained as to his own motives, and the 
ruthless probing of himself it induced, both led to the same 
conclusion : Louise must go away. The day after the ball, too, 
he had found her in a state of collapse, which was unparalleled 
even in the ups and downs of the past weeks. 

“ Anything ! — do anything you like with me. I wish I had 
never been born ; ” and, though no muscle of her face moved, 
large slow tears ran down her sallow cheeks. 

Unconsciously twisting and bending Herries’s card, which 
was lying on the table, Maurice laid his plan before her. And 
having won the above consent, he did not let. the grass grow 
under his feet. He applied to Miss Jensen for practical aid, and 
that lady was tactful enough to give it without curiosity. She 
knew Dresden well, recommended it as a lively place, and 
wrote forthwith to a Pension there, engaging rooms for a lady 
who had just recovered from a severe illness. By tacit agree- 


MAURICE GUEST 


320 


ment, this was understood to cover any extravagance or im- 
prudence, of which Louise might make herself guilty. 

Now she had gone, and with her, the central interest of his 
life. But the tired gesture with which he took off his hat and 
wiped his forehead, as he walked home, was expressive of the 
relief he felt that he was not going to see her again for some 
time. 

He let a fortnight elapse — a fortnight of colourless days, un- 
broken by word or sign from her. Then, one night, he spent 
several hours writing to her — writing a carefully worded letter, 
in which he put forward the best reasons he could devise, for her 
remaining away altogether. 

To this he received no answer. 


X 


From one of the high, wooden benches, at the back of the 
amphitheatre in the Alberthalle, where he had lain at full length, 
listening to the performance of a Berlin pianist, Krafft rose, 
full to the brim of impressions, and eager to state them. 

“ That man,” he began, as he left the hall between Maurice 
and Avery Hill, “ is a successful teacher. And therewith his 
fate as an artist is sealed. No teacher can get on to the higher 
rungs of the ladder, and no inspired musician be a satisfactory 
teacher. If the artist is obliged to share his art, his pupils, 
should they be intelligent, may pick up something of his skill, 
learn the trick of certain things; but the moment he begins to 
set up dogmas, it is the end of him. — As if it were possible for 
one person to prescribe to another, of a totally different tempera- 
ment, how he ought to feel in certain passages, or be affected 
by certain harmonies! If I, for example, choose to play the 
later Beethoven sonatas as I would the Brahms Concerto in B 
flat, with a thoroughly modern irony, what is it that hinders me 
from doing it, and from satisfying myself, and kindred souls, 
who are honest enough to admit their feelings? Tradition, noth- 
ing in the world but tradition; tradition in the shape of the 
teacher steps in and says anathema: to this we are not accus- 
tomed, ergo , it cannot be good. — And it is just the same with 
those composers who are also pedagogues. They know, none 
better, that there are no hard and fast rules in their art ; that it 
is only convention, or the morbid ear of some medieval monk, 
which has banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called 
‘ pure writing ’ ; that further, you need only to have the regu- 
lation number of years behind you, to fling squeamishness to the 
winds. In other words, you learn rules to unlearn them with 
infinite pains. But the pupil, in his innocence, demands a 
rigid basis to go on — it is a human weakness, this, the craving 
for rules — and his teachers pamper him. Instead of saying: 
develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach 
yourself is worth knowing — instead of this, they build up 
walls and barriers to hedge him in, behind which, for their 
benefit, he must go through the antics of a performing dog. But 
nemesis overtakes them; they fall a victim to their own wiles, 

321 


322 


MAURICE GUEST 


just as the liar finally believes his own lies. Ultimately, they 
find their chief delight in the adroitness with which they them- 
selves overcome imaginary obstacles.” 

His companions were silent. Avery Hill had a nine hours’ 
working-day behind her, and was tired; besides, she made a 
point of never replying to Krafft’s tirades. Once only, of late, 
had she said to him in Maurice’s presence: “ You would reason 
the skin off one’s bones, Heinz. You are the most self-con- 
scious person alive.” Krafft had been much annoyed at this 
remark, and had asked her to call him a Jew and be done with 
it; but afterwards, he admitted to Maurice that she was right. 

“ And it’s only the naive natures that count.” 

Maurice had found his way back to Krafft; for, in the days 
of uncertainty that followed the posting of his letter, he needed 
human companionship. Until the question whether Louise 
would return or not was decided, he could settle to nothing; 
and Krafft’s ramblings took him out of himself. Since the 
ball, his other friends had given him the cold shoulder; hence 
it did not matter whether or no they approved of his renewed 
intimacy with Krafft — he said “ they,” but it was Madeleine 
who was present to his mind. And Krafft was an easy person 
to take up with again ; he never bore a grudge, and met Maurice 
readily, half-way. 

It had not taken the latter long to shape his actions for 
what he believed to be the best. But his thoughts were beyond 
control. He was as helpless against sudden spells of depression 
as against dreams of an iridescent brightness. He could no 
more avoid dwelling on the future than reliving the past. If 
Louise did not return, these memories were all that were left 
him. If she did, what form were their relations to each other 
going to assume ? — and this was the question that cost him most 
anxious thought. 

A thing that affected him oddly, at this time, was his grow- 
ing inability to call up her face. It was incredible. This face, 
which he had supposed he knew so well that he could have drawn 
it blindfold, had taken to eluding him; and the more impatient 
he became, the poorer was his success. The disquieting thing, 
however, was, that though he could not materialise her face, 
what invariably rose before his eyes was her long, bare arm, 
as it had lain on the black stuff of her dress. At first, it only 
came when he was battling to secure the face; then it took to 
appearing at unexpected moments; and eventually, it became a 
kind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from 


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323 


dreaming of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely 
enough, he was always on the point of doing it harm: either 
his teeth were meeting in it, or he had drawn the blade of a 
knife down the middle of the blue-veined whiteness, and the 
blood spurted out along the line, which reddened instantly in 
the wake of the knife. 

April had come, bringing April weather ; it was fitfully sunny, 
and a mild and generous dampness spurred on growth: shrubs 
and bushes were so thickly sprinkled with small buds that, at 
a distance, it seemed as though a transparent green veil had 
been flung over them. In the Gewandhaus, according to 
custom, the Ninth Symphony had brought the concert season 
to a close ; once more, the chorus had struggled victoriously with 
the Ode to Joy. And early one morning, Maurice held a note 
in his hand, in which Louise announced that she had “ come 
home,” the night before. 

She had been away for almost two months, and, to a certain 
extent, he had grown inured to her absence. At the sight of 
her handwriting, he had the sensation of being violently roused 
from sleep. Now he shrank from the moment when he should 
see her again; for it seemed that not only the present, but all 
his future depended on it. 

Late in the evening, he returned from the visit, puzzled and 
depressed. 

Seven had boomed from church-clocks far and near, before 
he reached the Briiderstrasse, but, nevertheless, he had been 
kept waiting in the passage for a quarter of an hour: and 
he was in such an apprehensive frame of mind that he took 
the delay as a bad omen. 

When he crossed the threshold, Louise came towards him 
with one of those swift movements which meant that she was 
in good spirits, and confident of herself. She held out her 
hands, and smiled at him with all her dark, mobile face, saying 
words that were as impulsive as her gesture. Maurice was 
always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of light-heartedness: 
they seemed to him strained and unreal, so accustomed had 
he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of her nature. 

“ You have come back?” he said, with her hand in his. 

“Yes, I’m here — for the present, at least.” 

The last words caught in his ear, and buzzed there, making 
his foreboding a certainty. On the spot, his courage failed him ; 
and though Louise continued to ring all the changes her voice 


324 


MAURICE GUEST 


was capable of, he did not recover his spirits. It was not merely 
the sense of strangeness, which inevitably attacked him after 
he had not seen her for some time ; on this occasion, it was more. 
Partly, it might be due to the fact that she was dressed in a dif- 
ferent way; her hair was done high on her head, and she wore 
a light grey dress of modish cut and design. Her face, too, 
had grown fuller; the hollows in her cheeks had vanished; and 
her skin had that peculiar clear pallor that was characteristic 
of it in health. 

He was stupidly silent; he could not join in her careless 
vivacity. Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that 
it was worth his coming to hear. 

But when she wished him good-bye, she said, with a strange 
smile: “Altogether, I am very grateful to you, Maurice, for 
having made me go away.” 

He himself no longer felt any satisfaction at what he had 
done. As soon as he left her, he tried to comprehend what 
had happened: the change in her was too marked for him to 
be able to console himself that he had imagined it. Not only 
had she seemingly recovered, as if by magic, from the lassitude 
of the winter — he could even have forgiven her the alteration in 
her style of dress, although this, too, helped to alienate her from 
him. But what he ended by recognising, with a jealous throb, 
was that she had mentally recovered as well; she was once 
more the self-contained girl he had first known, with a gift 
for keeping an outsider beyond the circle of her thoughts 
and feelings. An outsider! The weeks of intimate compan- 
ionship were forgotten, seemed never to have been. She had 
no further need of him, that was the clue to the mystery, and 
the end of the matter. 

And so it continued, the next day, and the next again ; Louise 
deliberately avoided touching on anything that lay below the 
surface. She vouchsafed no explanation of the words that had 
disquieted him, nor was the letter Maurice had written her once 
mentioned between them. 

But, though she seemed resolved not to confide in him, she 
could not dispense with the small, practical services, he was 
able to render her. They were even more necessary to her 
than before; for, if one thing was clear, it was that she 
no longer intended to cloister herself up inside her four walls: 
the day after her return, she had been out till late in the 
afternoon, and had come home with her hands full of parcels. 
She took it now as a matter of course that Maurice should 


MAURICE GUEST 


325 

accompany her; and did not, or would not, notice his abstrac- 
tion. 

After the lapse of a very short time, however, the young 
man began to feel that there was something feverish in the 
continual high level of her mood. She broke down, once or 
twice, in trying to sustain it, and was more of her eloquently 
silent self again: one evening, he came upon her, in the dusk, 
when she was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking out 
before her with the old questioning gaze. 

Occasionally he thought that she was waiting for something: 
in the middle of a sentence, she would break off, and grow 
absent-minded; and more than once, the unexpected advent 
of the postman threw her into a state of excitement, which she 
could not conceal. She was waiting for a letter. But Maurice 
was proud, and asked no questions; he took pains to use the 
cool, friendly tone, she herself adopted. 

Not a week had dragged out, however, since her return, be- 
fore he was suffering in a new way, in the oldest, cruellest way 
of all. 

The Pension at which she had stayed in Dresden, had been 
frequented by leisured foreigners: over twenty people, of 
various nationalities, had sat down daily at the dinner-table. 
Among so large a number, it would have been easy for Louise 
to hold herself aloof. But, as far as Maurice could gather, 
she had felt no inclination to do this. From the first, she 
seemed to have been the nucleus of an admiring circle, chief 
among the members of which was a family of Americans — a 
brother and two sisters, rich Southerners, possessed of a vague 
leaning towards art and music. The names of these people 
recurred persistently in her talk; and, as the days went by, 
Maurice found himself listening for one name in particular, 
with an irritation he could not master. Raymond van Houst — 
a ridiculous name! — fit only for a backstairs romance. But as 
often as she spoke of Dresden, it was on her lips. Whether 
in the Galleries, or at the Opera, on driving excursions, or on 
foot, this man had been at her side ; and soon the mere mention 
of him was enough to set Maurice’s teeth on edge. 

One afternoon, he found her standing before an extravagant 
mass of flowers, which were heaped up on the table ; there were 
white and purple violets, a great bunch of lilies of the valley, 
and roses of different colours. They had been sent to her from 
Dresden, she said ; but, beyond this, she offered no explanation. 
All the vases in the room were collected before her; but she 


MAURICE GUEST 


326 

had not begun to fill them: she stood with her hands in the 
flowers, tumbling them about, enjoying the contact of their 
moist freshness. 

To Maurice’s remark that she seemed to take a pleasure in 
destroying them, she returned a casual : “ What does it mat- 

ter?” and taking up as many violets as she could hold, looked 
defiantly at him over their purple leaves. Through all she said 
and did ran a strong undercurrent of excitement. 

But before Maurice left, her manner changed. She came 
over to him, and said, without looking up : “ Maurice . . . 

I want to tell you something.” 

“Yes; what is it?” He spoke with the involuntary cool- 
ness this mood of hers called out in him; and she was quick 
to feel it. She returned to the table. 

“You ask so prosaically: you are altogether prosaic to-day. 
And it is not a thing I can tell you off-hand. You would 
need to sit down again. It’s a long story ; and you were going ; 
and it’s late. We will leave it till to-morrow: that will be 
time enough. And if it is fine, we can go out somewhere, and 
I’ll tell you as we go.” 

It was a brilliant May afternoon: great w T hite clouds were 
piled one on the top of another, like bales of wool; and their 
fantastic bulging roundnesses made the intervening patches of 
blue seem doubly distant. The wind was hardly more than a 
breath, which curled the tips of thin branches, and fluttered 
the loose ends of veils and laces. In the Rosental , where the 
meadow-slopes were emerald-green, and each branch bore its 
complement of delicately curled leaves, the paths were so 
crowded that there could be no question of a connected con- 
versation. But again, Louise was not in a hurry to begin. 

She continued meditative, even when they had reached the 
Kaiserpark , and were sitting with their cups before them, in 
the long, wooden, shed-like building, open at one side. She 
had taken off her hat — a somewhat showy white hat, trimmed 
with large white feathers — and laid it on the table; one dark 
wing of hair fell lower than the other, and shaded her fore- 
head. 

Maurice, who was on tenter-hooks, subdued his impatience 
as long as he could. Finally, he emptied his cup at a draught, 
and pushed it away. 

“You wanted to speak to me, you said.” — His manner was 
curt, from sheer nervousness. 

His voice startled her. “ Yes, I have something to tell you,” 


MAURICE GUEST 


327 


she said, with a hesitation he did not know in her. “ But I 
must go back a little. — If you remember, Maurice, you wrote 
to me while I was away, didn’t you ? ” she said, and looked 
not at him, but at her hands clasped before her. “ You gave 
me a number of excellent reasons why it would be better for 
me not to come back here. I didn’t answer your letter at 
the time because . . . What should you say, Maurice, if I 
told you now, that I intended to take your advice?” 

“ You are going away? ” The words jerked out gratingly, 
of themselves. 

“ Perhaps. — That is what I want to speak to you about. I 
have a chance of doing so.” 

“ Chance ? How chance ? ” he asked sharply. 

“ That’s what I am going to tell you, if you will give me 
time.” 

Drawing a letter from her pocket, she smoothed the creases 
out of the envelope, and handed it to him. 

While he read it, she looked away, looked over the enclosure. 
Some people were crossing it, and she followed them with her 
eyes, though she had often seen their counterparts before. A 
man in a heavy ulster — notwithstanding the mildness of the 
day — stalked on ahead, unconcerned about the fate of his family, 
which dragged, a woman and two children, in the rear: like 
savages, thought Louise, where the male goes first, to scent 
danger. But the crackling of paper recalled her attention; 
Maurice was folding the sheet, and replacing it in the en- 
velope, with a ludicrous precision. His face had taken on a 
pinched expression, and he handed the letter back to her with- 
out a word. 

She looked at him, expecting him to say something; but he 
was obdurate. “ This was what I was waiting all these days 
to tell you,” she said. 

“ You knew it was coming then ? ” He scarcely recognised 
his own voice; he spoke as he supposed a judge might speak 
to a proven criminal. 

Louise shrugged her shoulders. “ No. Yes. — That is, as 
far as it’s possible to know such a thing.” 

Through the crude glass window, the sun cast a medley of 
lines and lights on her hands, and on the checkered table-cloth. 
There were two rough benches, and a square table; the coffee- 
cups stood on a metal tray; the lid of the pot was odd, did 
not match the set: all these inanimate things, which, a moment 
ago, Maurice had seen without seeing them, now stood out 


MAURICE GUEST 


328 

before his eyes, as if each of them had acquired an independent 
life, and no longer fitted into its background. 

“ Let us go home,” he said, and rose. 

“Go home? But we have only just come!” cried Louise, 
with what seemed to him pretended surprise. “ Why do you 
want to go home? It is so quiet here: I can talk to you. For 
I need your advice, Maurice. You must help me once again.” 

“I help you? — in this? No, thank you. All I can do, 
it seems, is to wish you joy.” He remained standing, with his 
hand on the back of the bench. 

But at the cold amazement of her eyes, he took his seat 
again. “ It is a matter for yourself — only you can decide. It’s 
none of my business.” He moved the empty cups about on 
the cloth. 

“But why are you angry?” 

“ Haven’t I good reason to be? To see you — you! — accept- 
ing an impertinence of this kind so quietly. For it is an imperti- 
nence, Louise, that a man you hardly know should write to 
you in this cocksure way and ask you to marry him. Im- 
pertinent and absurd ! ” 

“ You have a way of finding most things I want to do ab- 
surd,” she answered. “ In this case, though, you’re mistaken. 
The tone of the letter is all it should be. And, besides, I 
know Mr. Van Houst very well.” 

Maurice looked at her with a sardonic smile. 

“ Seven weeks is a long time,” she added. 

“Seven weeks! — and for a lifetime!” 

“ Oh, one can get to know a man inside out, in seven weeks,” 
she said, with wilful flippancy. “ Especially if, from the first, 
he shows so plainly . . . Maurice, don’t be angry. You have 
always been kind to me; you’re not going to fail me now 
that I really need help? I have no one else, as you very 
well know.” She smiled at him, and held out her hand. He 
could not refuse to take it; but he let it drop again imme- 
diately. 

“ Let me tell you all about it, and how it happened, and then 
you will understand,” Louise went on, in a persuasive voice — 
he had once believed that the sound of this voice would recon- 
cile him to any fate. “You think the time was short, but we 
were together every day, and sometimes all day long. I knew 
from the first that he cared for me; he made no secret of it. 
If anything, it is a proof of tactfulness on his part that he 
should have written rather than have spoken to me himself. 


MAURICE GUEST 


329 


I like him for doing it, for giving me time. And then, listen, 
Maurice, what I should gain by marrying him. He is rich, 
really rich, and good-looking — in an American way — and thirty- 
two years old. His sisters would welcome me — one of them 
told me as much, and told me, too, that her brother had never 
cared for anyone before. He would make an ideal husband,” 
she added with a sudden recklessness, at the sight of Mau- 
rice’s unmoved face. “ Americanly chivalrous to the finger- 
tips, and with just enough of the primitive animal in him to 
ward off monotony.” 

Maurice raised his hand, as if in self-defence. “ So you, too, 
then, like any other woman, would marry just for the sake 
of marrying? ” he asked, with bitter disbelief. 

“ Yes. — And just especially and particularly I.” 

“For Heaven’s sake, let us get out of here!” 

Without listening to her protest, he went to find the waiter. 
Louise followed him out of the enclosure, carrying hat and 
gloves in her hand. 

They struck into narrow by-paths going back, to avoid the 
people. But it was impossible to escape all, and those they 
met, eyed them with curiosity. The clear English voices rang 
out unconcerned ; the pale girl with the Italian eyes was visibly 
striving to appease her companion, who marched ahead, angry 
and impassive. 

For a few hundred yards neither of them spoke. Then 
Louise began anew. 

“And that is not all. You judge harshly and unfairly be- 
cause you don’t know the facts. I am almost quite alone in 
the world. I have no relatives that I care for, except one 
brother. I lived with him, on his station in Queensland, until 
I came here. But now he’s married, and there would be no 
room for me in the house — figuratively speaking. If I go back 
now, I must share his home with his wife, whom I knew and 
disliked. While here is some one who is fond of me, and 
is rich, and who offers me not only a home of my own, but, what 
is far more to me, an entirely new life in a new world.” 

“ Excellent reasons ! But in reckoning them up, you have 
forgotten what seems to me the most important one of all; 
whether or no you care for him, for this . . . this ...” 
in his trouble, he could not find a suitable epithet. 

But Louise refused to be touched. “ I like him,” she an- 
swered, and looked across the slope of meadow they were pass- 
ing. “ I liked him, yes, as any woman would like a man who 


330 


MAURICE GUEST 


treated her as he did me. He was very good to me. And not 
in the least repugnant. — But care?” she interrupted herself. 
“ If by care, you mean . . . Then no, a hundred thousand 
times, no! I shall never care for anyone in that way again, 
and you know it. I had enough of that to last me all my 
life.” 

“ Very well, then, and I say, if you married a man you 
care for as little as that, I should never believe in a woman 
again. — Not, of course, that it matters to you what I believe in 
and what I don’t! But to hear you — you, Louise! — counting 
up the profits to be gained from it, like . . . like — oh, I don’t 
know what! I couldn’t have believed it of you.” 

“ You are a very uncomfortable person, Maurice.” 

“ I mean to be. And more than uncomfortable. Listen to 
me! You talk of it lightly and coolly; but if you married this 
man, without caring for him more than you say you do, just 
for the sake of a home, or his money, or his good manners, or 
the primitive animal, or whatever it is that attracts you in him : ” 
— he grew bitter again in spite of himself — “ if you did this, 
you would be stifling all that is good and generous in your 
nature. For you may say what you like; the man is little more 
than a stranger to you. What can you know of his real char- 
acter ? And what can he know of you ? ” 

“ He knows as much of me as I ever intend him to know.” 

“ Indeed ! Then you wouldn’t tell him, for instance, that 
only a few months ago, you were eating your heart out for some 
one else ? ” 

Louise winced as though the words had struck her in the 
face. Before she answered, she stood still, in the middle of 
the path, and pinned on, with deliberate movements, the big 
white hat, beneath the drooping brim and nodding feathers 
of which, her eyes were as black as coals. 

“ No, I should not,” she said. “Why should I? Do you 
think it would make him care more for me to know that I had 
nearly died of love for another man?” 

“ Certainly not. And it might also make him less ready 
to marry you.” 

“ That’s exactly what I think.” 

One was as bitter as the other; but Maurice was the more 
violent of the two. 

“And so you would begin the new life you talk of, with lies 
and deceit? — A most excellent beginning! ” 

“ If you like to call it that. I only know, that no one with 


MAURICE GUEST 


33i 


any sense thinks of dragging up certain things when once they 
are dead and buried. Or are you, perhaps, simple enough to 
believe any man living would get over what I have to tell 
him, and care for me afterwards in the same way? ” 

He turned, with tell-tale words on his tongue. But the ex- 
pression of her face intimidated him. He had only to look at 
her to know that, if he spoke of himself at this moment, she 
would laugh him to scorn. 

But the beloved face acted on him in its own way; his sense 
of injury weakened. “Louise,” he said in an altered tone; 
“ whatever you say to the contrary, in a matter like this, I 
can’t advise you. For I don’t understand — and never should. 
*> — But of one thing I’m as sure as I am that the sun will rise 
to-morrow, and that is, that you won’t do it. Do you honestly 
think you could go on living, day after day, with a man you 
don’t sincerely care for? — of whom the most you can say is 
that he’s not repugnant to you? You little know what it would 
mean! — And you may reason as you will; I answer for you; 
and I say no, and again no. It isn’t in you to do it. You 
are not mean and petty enough. You can’t hide your feelings, 
try as you will. — No, you couldn’t deceive some one, by pre- 
tending to care for him, for months on end. You would be 
miserably unhappy ; and then — then I know what would happen. 
You would be candid — candid about everything — when it was 
too late.” 

There was no mistaking the sincerity of his words. But 
Louise was boundlessly irritated, and made no further effort 
to check her resentment. 

“You have an utterly false and ridiculous idea of me, and 
of everything belonging to me.” 

“ I haven’t spent all this time with you for nothing. I 
know you better than you know yourself. I believe in you, 
Louise. And I know I am right. And some day you’ll know 
it, too.” 

These words only incensed her the more. 

“ What you know — or think you know — is nothing to me. 
If you had listened to me patiently, as I asked you to, instead of 
losing your temper, and taking what I said as a personal affront, 
then, yes, then I should have told you something else besides. 
How, when I came back, a fortnight ago, I was quite resolved 
to marry this man, if he asked me — marry him and cut myself 
off for ever from my old life and its hateful memories. — And 
why not? I’m still young. I still have a right to pleasure — 


332 


MAURICE GUEST 


and change — and excitement. — And in all these days, I didn’t 
once hesitate — not till the letter came yesterday — and then not 
till night. It wasn’t like me; for when once I have made up 
my mind, I never go back. So I determined to ask you — ask 
you to help me to decide. For you had always been kind to me. 
— But this is what I get for doing it.” Her anger flared up 
anew. ‘‘You have treated me abominably, to-day, Maurice; 
and I shan’t forget it. All your ridiculous notions about right 
and wrong don’t matter a straw. What does matter is, that 
when I ask for help, you should behave as if — as if I were going 
to commit a crime. Your opinion is nothing to me. If I decide 
to marry the man, I shall do it, no matter what you say.” 

“ I’m sure you will.” 

“ And if I don’t, let me tell you this : it won’t be because 
of anything you’ve said to-day. Not from any high-flown no- 
tions of honesty, or generosity, as you would like to make your- 
self believe; but merely because I haven’t the energy in me. 
I couldn’t keep it up. I want to be quiet, to have an easy 
life. The fact that some one else had to suffer, too, wouldn’t 
matter to me, in the least. It’s myself I think of, first and 
foremost, and as long as I live it will always be myself.” 

Her voice belied her words; he expected each moment that 
she would burst out crying. However, she continued to walk 
on, with her head erect; and she did not take back one of the 
unkind things she had said. 

They parted without being reconciled. Maurice stood and 
watched her mount the staircase, in the vain hope that she 
would turn, before reaching the top. 

He did not see how the fine May afternoon declined, and 
passed into evening; how the high stacks of cloud were broken 
up at sunset, and shredded into small flakes and strips of cloud, 
which, saturated with gold, vanished in their turn: how the 
shadows in the corners turned from blue to black; nor did he 
note the mists that rose like steam from the ground, intensifying 
the acrid smell of garlic, with which the woods abounded. 
Screened by the thicket, he sat on his accustomed seat, and gave 
himself up to being miserable. 

For some time he was conscious only of how deeply he had 
been wounded — just as one suffers from the bruise after the 
blow. At the moment, he had been stunned into a kind of 
quiescence; now his nerves throbbed and tingled. But, little by 
little, a vivid recollection of what had actually occurred re- 
turned to sting him : and certain details stood out fixed and un- 


MAURICE GUEST 


333 

forgettable. Yet, in reliving the hours just past, he felt 
no regret at the fact that they had quarrelled. What first 
smote him was an unspeakable amazement at Louise. The 
knowledge that, for weeks on end, she had been contem- 
plating marriage, was beyond his belief. Hardly recovered 
from the throes of a suffering believed incurable, and while he 
was still going about her with gloved hands, as it were, she 
was ready to throw herself into the arms of the first likely man 
she met. He could not help himself: in this connection, every 
little trait in her that was uncongenial to him, started up with 
appalling distinctness. Hitherto, he had put it down to his 
own sensitiveness; he was over-nice. But for the most part, 
he had forgiven her on account of all she had come through; 
for he believed that this grief had swept destructively through 
her nature, leaving a jagged wound, which only time could 
heal. Now, as if to prove to him what a fool he was, she 
showed him that he had been mistaken in this also; she could 
recover her equilibrium, while he still hedged her round with 
solicitude — recover herself, and transfer her affection to an- 
other person. Good God ! Was it so easy, a matter of so little 
moment, to grow fond of one who was almost a stranger to 
her? — for, in spite of what she said to the contrary, he was 
persuaded that she had a stronger feeling for this man than 
she had been willing to admit: this riper man, with his ex- 
perienced way of treating women. Was, then, his own idea 
of her wholly false? Was there, after all, something in her 
nature that he could not, would not, understand ? He denied it 
fiercely, almost before he had formulated the question: no 
matter what her actions were, or what words she said, deep down 
in her was an intense will for good, a spring of noble impulse. 
It was only that she had never had a proper chance. But he 
denied it to a vision of her face: the haunting eyes which, 
at first sight, had destroyed his peace of mind; the dead black 
hair against the ivory-coloured skin. It was in these things 
that the truth lay, not in the blind promptings of her inclination. 

For the first time, the idea of marriage took definite shape in 
his mind. For all he knew, it might have been lying dormant 
there, all along; but he would doubtless have remained un- 
conscious of it, for weeks to come, had it not been for the 
events of the afternoon. Now, however, Louise had made it 
plain that his feelings for her were of an exaggerated delicacy; 
plain that she herself had no such scruples. He need hesitate no 
longer. But marry! . . . marriage! ... he marry Louise! — 


334 


MAURICE GUEST 


at the thought of it, he laughed. That he, Maurice Guest, 
should, for an instant, put himself on a par with her American 
suitor! The latter, rich, leisured, able to satisfy her caprices, 
surround her with luxury: himself, younger than she by sev- 
eral years, without prospects, with nothing to offer her but 
a limitless devotion. He tried to imagine himself saying: 
“ Louise, will you marry me ? ” and the words stuck in 
his throat; for he saw the amused astonishment of her eyes. 
And not merely at the presumption he would be guilty of ; what 
was as clear to him as day was that she did not really care for 
him; not as he cared for her; not with the faintest hint of a 
warmer feeling. If he had never grasped this before, he did 
so now, to the full. Sitting there, he affirmed to himself that 
she did not even like him. She was grateful to him, of course, 
for his help and friendship; but that was all. Beyond this, he 
would not have been surprised to learn from her own lips that 
she actually disliked him : for there was something irreconcilable 
about their two natures. And never, for a moment, had she 
considered him in the light of an eligible lover — oh, how that 
stung! Here was she, with an attraction for him which nothing 
could weaken; and in him was not the smallest lineament, of 
body or of mind, to wake a response in her. He was powerless 
to increase her happiness by a hair’s breadth. Her nerves would 
never answer to the inflection of his voice, or the touch of his 
hand. How could such things be? What anomaly was here? 

To-day, her face rose before him unsought — the sweet, dark 
face with the expression of slight melancholy that it wore in 
repose, as he loved it best. It was with him when, stiff and 
tired, he emerged from his seclusion, and walked home through 
the trails of mist that hung, breast-high, on the meadow-land. 
It was with him under the street-lamps, and, to its accompany- 
ing presence, the strong conviction grew in him that evasion 
on his part was no longer possible. Sooner or later, come what 
might, the words he had faltered over, even to himself, would 
have to be spoken. 


XI 


One day, some few weeks later, Madeleine sat at her writing- 
table, biting the end of her pen. A sheet of note-paper lay 
before her; but she had not yet written a word. She frowned 
to herself, as she sat. 

Hard at work that morning, she had heard a ring at the 
door-bell, and, a minute after, her landlady ushered in a visitor, 
in the shape of Miss Martin. Madeleine rose from the piano 
with ill-concealed annoyance, and having seated Miss Martin 
on the sofa, waited impatiently for the gist of her visit; for 
she was sure that the lively American would not come to see 
her without an object. And she was right: she knew to a 
nicety when the important moment arrived. Most of the visit 
was preamble; Miss Martin talked at length of her own 
affairs, assuming, with disarming candour, that they interested 
other people as much as herself. She went into particulars about 
her increasing dissatisfaction with Schwarz, and retailed the 
glowing accounts she heard on all sides of a teacher called 
Schrievers. He was not on the staff of the Conservatorium ; but 
he had been a favourite of Liszt’s, and was attracting many 
pupils. From this, Miss Martin passed to more general topics, 
such as the blow Dove had recently received over the head of 
his attachment to pretty Susie Fay. “ Why, Sue, she feels 
perfectly dreadful about it. She can’t understand Mr. Dove 
thinking they were anything but real good friends. Most 
every one here knew right away that Sue had her own boy down 
home in Illinois. Yes, indeed.” 

Madeleine displayed her want of interest in Dove’s concerns 
so plainly, that Miss Martin could not do otherwise than cease 
discussing them. She rose to end her call. As, however, she 
stood for the momentary exchange of courtesies that preceded 
the hand-shake, she said, in an off-hand way: “ Miss Wade, I 
presume I needn’t inquire if you’re acquainted with the latest 
about Louise Dufrayer? I say, I guess I needn’t inquire, see- 
ing you’re so well acquainted with Mr. Guest. I presume, 
though, you don’t see so much of him now. No, indeed. I 
hear he’s thrown over all his friends. I feel real disappointed 
about him. I thought he was a most agreeable young man. 

335 


MAURICE GUEST 


336 

But, as momma says, you never can tell. An’ I reckon Louise 
is most to blame. Seems like she simply cant exist without a 
beau. But I wonder she don’t feel ashamed to show herself, 
the way she’s talked of. Why, the stories I hear about her! 
... an’ they’re always together. She’s gotten her a heap 
of new things, too — a millionaire asked her to marry him, when 
she was in Dresden, but he wasn’t good enough for her, no 
ma’am, an’ all on account of Mr. Guest. — Yes, indeed. But 
I must say I feel kind of sorry for him, anyway. He was a 
real pleasant young man.” 

“ Maurice Guest is quite able to look after himself,” said 
Madeleine drily. 

“Is that so? Well, I presume you ought to know, you 
were once so well acquainted with him — if I may say, Miss 
Wade, we all thought it was you was his fancy. Yes, indeed.” 

“ Oh, I always knew he liked Louise.” 

But this was the chief grudge she, too, bore him: that he 
had been so little open with her. His seeming frankness had 
been merely a feint; he had gone his own way, and had never 
really let her know what he was thinking and planning. She 
now recalled the fact that Louise had only once been mentioned 
between them, since the time of her illness, over six months 
ago; and she, Madeleine, had foolishly believed his reticence 
to be the result of a growing indifference. 

Since the night of the ball, they had shunned each other, by 
tacit consent. But, though she could avoid him in person, 
Madeleine could not close her ears to the gossipy tales that 
circulated. In the last few weeks, too, the rumours had be- 
come more clamatory: these two misguided creatures had 
obviously no regard for public opinion; and several times, 
Madeleine had been obliged to go out of her own way, to 
escape meeting them face to face. On these occasions, she told 
herself that she had done with Maurice Guest; and this de- 
cision was the more easy as, since the beginning of the year, 
she had moved almost entirely in German circles. But now 
the distasteful tattle was thrust under her very nose. It seemed 
to put things in a different light to hear Maurice pitied and 
discussed in this very room. In listening to her visitor, she 
had felt once more how strong her right of possession was 
in him; she was his oldest friend in Leipzig. Now she was 
ready to blame herself for having let her umbrage stand in 
the way of them continuing friends: had he been dropping 
in as he had formerly done, she might have prevented things 


MAURICE GUEST 


337 

from going so far, and certainly have been of use in hindering 
them from growing worse; for, with Louise, one was never 
sure. And so she determined to write to him, without delay. 
In this, though, she was piqued as well by a violent curiosity. 
Louise said to have given up a good match for his sake! — 
she could not believe it. It was incredible that she could 
care for him as he cared for her. Madeleine knew them both 
too well; Maurice was not the type of man by whom Louise 
was attracted. 

She wrote in a guarded way. 

It seems absurd that old friends should behave as we are 
doing. If anything that happened was my fault , forgive it , 
and show me you dont bear me a grudge , by coming to see me 
to-morrow afternoon . 

They had not met for close on four months, and, for the 
first few minutes after his arrival, Madeleine was confused by 
the change that had taken place in Maurice. It was not only 
that he was paler and thinner than of old: his boyish manner 
had deserted him; and, when he forgot himself, his eyes had 
a strange, brooding expression. 

“Other-worldly . . . almost,” thought Madeleine; and, in 
order to surmount an awkwardness she had been resolved not 
to feel, she talked glibly. Maurice said he could not stay 
long, and wished to keep his hat in his hand; but before he 
knew it, he was sitting in his accustomed place on the sofa. 

As they stirred their tea, she told him how annoyed she had 
felt at having recently had a performance postponed in favour 
of Avery Hill: and how the latter was said to be going crazy, 
with belief in her own genius. Maurice seemed to be in the 
dark about what was happening, and made no attempt to hide 
his ignorance. She could see, too, that he was not interested 
in these things; he played with a tassel of the sofa, and did 
not notice when she stopped speaking. 

It is his turn now, she said to herself, and left the silence that 
followed unbroken. Before it had lasted long, however, he 
looked up from his employment of twisting the tassel as far 
round as it would go, and then letting it fly back. “ I say, 
Madeleine, now I’m here, there’s something I should like to 
ask you. I hope, though, you won’t think it impertinence on 
my part.” He cleared his throat. “ Once or twice lately I’ve 
heard a report about you — several times, indeed. I didn’t pay 


MAURICE GUEST 


338 

any attention to it — not till a few days back, that is — when I 
saw it — or thought I saw it — confirmed with my own eyes. I 
was at Bonorand’s on Monday evening; I was behind you.” 

In an instant Madeleine had grasped what he was driving 
at. “Well, and what of that, pray?” she asked. “Do 
you think I should have been there, if I had been ashamed 
of it?” 

“ I saw whom you were with,” he went on, and treated the 
tassel so roughly that it came away in his hand. “ I say, 
Madeleine, it can’t be true, what they say — that you are think- 
ing of ... of marrying that old German ? ” 

Madeleine coloured, but continued to meet his eyes. “And 
why not?” she asked again. — “Don’t destroy my furniture, 
please.” 

“Why not?” he echoed, and laid the tassel on the table. 
“ Well, if you can ask that, I should say you don’t know the 
facts of the case. If I had a sister, Madeleine, I shouldn’t care 
to see her going about with that man. He’s an old — don’t you 
know he has had two wives, and is divorced from both ? ” 

“Fiddle-dee-dee! You and your sister! Do you think a 
man is going to come to nearly fifty without knowing something 
of life? That he hasn’t been happy in his matrimonial rela- 
tions is his misfortune, not his fault.” 

“Then it’s true?” 

“ Why not ? ” she asked for the third time. 

“ Then, of course, I’ve nothing more to say. I’ve no right 
to interfere in your private affairs. I hoped I should still be 
in time — that’s all.” 

“ No, you can’t go yet, sit still,” she said peremptorily. “ I 
too, have something to say. — But will you first tell me, please, 
what it can possibly matter to you, whether you are in time, as 
you call it, or not? ” 

“ Why, of course, it matters. — We haven’t seen much of each 
other lately; but you were my first friend here, and I don’t 
forget it. Particularly in a case like this, where everything is 
against the idea of you marrying this man: your age — your 
character — all common sense.” 

“ Those are only words, Maurice. With regard to my age, 
I am over twenty-seven, as you know. I need no boy of eight- 
een for a husband. Then I am plain: I shall never attract 
anyone by my personal appearance, nor will a man ever be led 
to do foolish things for my sake. I have worked hard all my 
life, and have never known what it is to let to-morrow take 


MAURICE GUEST 


339 


care of itself. — Now here, at last, comes a man of an age not 
wholly unsuitable to mine, whatever you may say. What 
though he has enjoyed life? He offers me, not only a certain 
social standing, but material comfort for the rest of my days. 
Whereas, otherwise, I may slave on to the end, and die event- 
ually in a governesses’ home.” 

" You would never do that. You are not one of that kind. 
But do you think, for a moment, you’d be happy in such a 
position of dependence?” 

“ That’s my own affair. There would certainly be nothing 
extraordinary in it, if I were.” 

“As you put it, perhaps not. But — * — If it were even 
some one of your own race! But these foreigners think so 
queerly. And then, too, Madeleine, you’ll laugh, I daresay, 
but I’ve always thought of you as different from other women 
— strong and independent, and quite sure of yourself. The 
kind of girl that makes others seem little and stupid. No one 
here was good enough for you.” 

Madeleine’s amazement was so great that she did not reply 
immediately. Then she laughed. “ You have far too high an 
opinion of me. Do you really think I like standing alone? 
That I do it by preference? — You were never more mistaken, 
if you do. It has always been a case of necessity with me, 
no one ever having asked me to try the other way. I suppose 
like you, they thought I enjoyed it. However, set your mind 
at rest. Your kind intervention has not come too late. There 
is still nothing definite.” 

“ I’m glad to hear it.” 

“ I don’t say there mayn’t be,” she added. “ Herr Lohse and 
I are excellent friends, and it won’t occur to me not to accept 
the theatre-tickets and other amusements he is able to give me. 
— But it is also possible that for the sake of your ideals, I 
may die a solitary old maid.” 

Here she was overcome by the comical side of the matter, 
and burst out laughing. 

“ What a ridiculous boy you are ! If you only knew how 
you have turned the tables on me. I sent for you, this after- 
noon, to give you a sound talking-to, and instead of that, here 
you sit and lecture me.” 

“ Well, if I have achieved something ” 

“ It’s too absurd,” she repeated more tartly. “ For you to 
come here in this way to care for my character, when you your- 
self are the talk of the place.” 


340 


MAURICE GUEST 


His face changed, as she had meant it to do. He choked 
back a sharp rejoinder. “ I’d be obliged, if you’d leave my 
affairs out of the question.” 

“ I daresay you would. But that’s just what I don’t intend 
to do. For if there are rumours going the round about me, 
what on earth is one to say of you? I needn’t go into details. 
You know quite well what I mean. Let me tell you that your 
name is in everybody’s mouth, and that you are being made to 
appear not only contemptible, but ridiculous.” 

“ The place is a hot-bed of scandal. I’ve told you that 
before,” he cried, angry enough now. “ These dirty-minded 
Musiker think it outside the bounds of possibility for two people 
to be friends.” But his tone was unsure, and he was conscious 
of it. 

“ Yes — when one of the two is Louise.” 

“ Kindly leave Miss Dufrayer out of the question.” 

“Oh, Maurice, don’t Miss Dufrayer me! — I knew Louise 
before you even knew that she existed. — But answer me one 
question, and I’m done. Are you engaged to Louise?” 

“ Most certainly not.” 

“Well, then, you ought to be. — For though you don’t care 
what people say about yourself, your conscience will surely 
prick you when you hear that you’re destroying the last shred 
of reputation Louise had left. — I should be sorry to repeat to 
you what is being said of her.” 

But after he had gone, she reproached herself for having put 
such a question to him. At the pass things had reached, it was 
surely best for him to go through with his infatuation, and get 
over it. Whereas she, in a spasm of conventionality, had 
pointed him out the sure road to perdition ; for the worst thing 
that could happen would be for him to bind himself to Louise, in 
any fashion. As if her reputation mattered ! The more rapidly 
she got rid of what remained to her, the better it w T ould be for 
every one, and particularly for Maurice Guest. 

Had Maurice been in doubt as to Madeleine’s meaning, it 
would have been removed within a few minutes of his leaving 
the house. As he turned a corner of the Gewandhaus, he came 
face to face with Krafft, Though they had not met for weeks, 
Heinrich passed with no greeting but a disagreeable smile. 
Maurice was not half-way across the road, however, when 
Krafft came running back, and, taking the lappel of his friend’s 
coat, allowed his wit to play round the talent Maurice displayed 
for wearing dead men’s shoes. 


MAURICE GUEST 


34i 


Carmen was given that night in the theatre; Maurice had 
fetched tickets from the box-office in the morning. An ardent 
liking for the theatre had sprung up in Louise of late; and 
they were there sometimes two or three evenings in succession. 
Besides this, Carmen was her favourite opera, which she never 
missed. They heard it from the second-top gallery. Leaning 
back in his corner, Maurice could see little of the stage; 
but the bossy waves of his companion’s head were sharply out- 
lined for him against the opposite tier. 

Louise was engrossed in what was happening on the stage; 
her eyes were wide open, immovable. He had never known 
anyone surrender himself so utterly to the mimic life of the 
theatre. Under the influence of music or acting that gripped 
her, Louise lost all remembrance of her surroundings: she lived 
blindly into this unreal world, without the least attempt at 
criticism. Afterwards, she returned to herself tired and di- 
spirited, and with a marked distaste for the dullness of real life. 
Here, since the first lively clash of the orchestra, since the cur- 
tain rose on gay Sevilla, she had been as far away from him 
as if she were on another planet. Not, he was obliged to con- 
fess to himself, that it made very much difference. Though he 
was now her constant companion, though his love for her was 
stronger than it had ever been, he knew less of her to-day than 
he had known six months ago, when one all-pervading emotion 
had made her life an open book. 

Since that unhappy afternoon on which he learnt the con- 
tents of the letter from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly 
every day in each other’s company. Louise had borne him no 
malice for what he had said to her; indeed, with the generous 
forgetfulness of offence, which was one of the most astonish- 
ing traits in her character, she met him, the day after, as 
though nothing had passed between them. By common con- 
sent, they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not 
know to this day, whether or how she had answered the letter. 
For, although she had forgiven him, she was not quite the same 
with him as before ; a faint change had come over their relation 
to each other. It was something so elusive that he could not 
have defined it; yet nevertheless it existed, and he was often 
acutely conscious of it. It was not that she kept her thoughts 
to herself; but she did not say all she thought — that was it. 
And this shade of reserve, in her who had been so frank, ate 
into him sorely. He accepted it, though, as a chastisement, for 
he had been in a very contrite frame of mind on awakening to 


342 


MAURICE GUEST 


the knowledge that he had all but lost her. And so the days 
had slipped away. An outsider had first to open his eyes to 
the fact that it was impossible for things to go on any longer 
as they were doing; that, for her sake, he must make an end, 
and quickly. 

And yet it had been so easy to drift, so hard to do otherwise, 
when Louise accepted all he did for her as a matter of course, 
in that high-handed way of hers which took no account of 
details. He felt sorry for her, too, for she was not happy. 
There was a gnawing discontent in her just now, and for this, 
in great measure, he held himself responsible: for a few weeks 
she had been buoyed up by the hope of a new life, and he had 
been the main agent in destroying this hope. In return, he 
had had nothing to offer her — nothing but a rigid living up 
to certain uncomfortable ideals, which brought neither change 
nor pleasure with them: and, despite his belief in the innate 
nobility of her nature, he could not but recognise that ideals 
were for her something colder and sterner than for other 
people. 

She made countless demands on his indulgence, and he learnt 
to see, only too clearly, what a dependent creature she was. 
It was more than a boon, it was a necessity to her, to have 
some one at her side who would care for her comfort and 
well-being. He could not picture her alone; for no one had 
less talent than she for the trifles that compose life. Her 
thoughts seemed always to be set on something larger, vaguer, 
beyond. 

He devoted as much time to her as he could spare from his 
work, and strove to meet her half-way in all she asked. But 
it was no slight matter; for her changes of mood had never 
been so abrupt as they were now. He did not know how to 
treat her. Sometimes, she was cold and unapproachable, so 
wrapped up in herself that he could not get near her; and per- 
haps only an hour later, her lips would curve upwards in the 
smile which made her look absurdly young, and her eyes, too, 
have all the questioning wonder of a child’s. Or she would 
be silent with him, not unkindly, but silent as a sphinx; and, 
on the same day, a fit of loquacity would seize her, when she 
was unable to speak quickly enough for the words that bubbled 
to her lips. He managed to please her seldomer than ever. But 
however she behaved, he never faltered. The right to be beside 
her was now his ; and the times she was the hardest on him were 
the times he loved her best. 


MAURICE GUEST 


343 


As spring, having reached and passed perfection, slipped over 
into summer, she was invaded by a restlessness that nothing 
could quell. It got into her hands and her voice, into all her 
movements, and worked upon her like a fever — like a crying 
need. So intense did it become that it communicated itself to 
him also. He, too, began to feel that rest and stillness were im- 
possible for them both, and to be avoided at any cost. 

“ I have never really seen spring,” Louise said to him, one 
day, in excuse of some irrational impulse that had driven her 
out of the house. And the quick picture she drew, of how, in 
her native land, the brief winter passed almost without transi- 
tion into the scathing summer; her suggestion of unchanging 
leaves, brown barrenness, and arid dryness; of grass burnt to 
cinders, of dust, drought, and hot, sandy winds: all this helped 
him to understand something of what she was feeling. A remem- 
brance of this parched heat was in her veins, making her eager 
not to miss any of the young, teeming beauty around her, or 
one of the new strange scents; eager to let the magic of this 
awakening permeate her and amaze her, like a primeval hap- 
pening. But, though he thus grasped something of what was 
going on in her, he was none the less uneasy under it: just as 
her feverish unburdening of herself after hours of silence, so 
now her attitude towards this mere change of nature dis- 
quieted him ; she over-enjoyed it, let herself go in its exuberance. 
And, as usual, when she lost hold of her nerves, he found 
himself retreating into his shell, practising self-control for 
two. 

Often, how often he could not count, the words that had to 
be said had risen to his lips. But they had never crossed them 
— in spite of the wanton greenness of the woods, which should 
have been the very frame in which to tell a woman you loved 
her. But not one drop of her nervous exaltation was meant 
for him : she had never shown, by the least sign, that she cared 
a jot for him; and daily he became more convinced that he 
was chasing a shadow, that he was nothing to her but the staff- 
age in the picture of her life. He was torn by doubts, and 
mortally afraid of the one little word that would put an end 
to them. 

He recollected one occasion when he had nearly succeeded 
in telling her, and when, but for a trick of fate, he would have 
done so. They were on their way home from the Nonne, 
where the delicate undergrowth of the high old trees was most 
prodigal, and where Louise had closed her eyes, and drunk in 


344 


MAURICE GUEST 


the rich, earthy odours. They had paused on the suspension- 
bridge, and stood, she with one ungloved hand on the railing, 
to watch the moving water. Looking at her, it had seemed to 
him that just on this afternoon, she might listen to what he 
had to say with a merciful attentiveness; she was quiet, and 
her face was gentle. He gripped the rail with both hands. 
But, before he could open his lips, a third person turned from 
the wood-path on to the bridge, making it tremble with his 
steps — a jaunty cavalry officer, with a trim moustache and 
bright dancing eyes. He walked past them, but threw a search- 
ing look at Louise, and, a little further along the bridge, stood 
still, as if to watch something that was floating in the water, 
in reality to look covertly back at her. She had taken no notice 
of him as he passed, but when he paused, she raised her head ; 
and then she looked at him — with a preoccupied air, it was true, 
but none the less steadily, and for several seconds on end. The 
words died on Maurice’s lips: and going home, he was as irre- 
sponsive as she herself . . . 

“ I love you, Louise — love you.” He said it now, sitting 
back in his dark corner in the theatre; but amid the buzz and 
hum of the music, and the shouting of the toreadors, he might 
have called the words aloud, and still she would not have 
heard them. 

Strangely enough, however, at this moment, for the first 
time during the evening, she turned her head. His eyes were 
fixed on her, in a dark, exorbitant gaze. Her own face 
hardened. 

“The opera-glass!” 

Maurice opened the leather case, and gave her the glass. 
Their fingers met, and hers groped for a moment round his 
hand. He withdrew it as though her touch had burnt him. 
Louise flashed a glance at him, and laid the opera-glass on the 
ledge in front of her, without making use of it. 

Slowly the traitorous blood subsided. To the reverberating 
music, which held all ears, and left him sitting alone with his 
fate, Maurice had a moment of preternatural clearness. He 
realised that only one course was open to him, and that was to 
go away. Bei Naclit und Nebel, if it could not be managed 
otherwise, but, however it happened, he must go. More wholly 
for her sake than Madeleine had dreamed of: unless he wanted 
to be led into some preposterous folly that would embitter 
the rest of his life. Who could say how long the wall he 
had built up round her — of the knowledge he shared with her, 


MAURICE GUEST 


345 

of pity for what she had undergone — would stand against the 
onset of this morbid, overmastering desire? 

To the gay, feelingless music, he thought out his departure 
in detail, sparing himself nothing. 

But in the long interval after the second act, when they 
were downstairs on the loggia , where it was still half daylight ; 
where the lights of cafes and street-lamps were only beginning 
here and there to dart into existence; where every man they 
met seemed to notice Louise with a start of attention: here 
Maurice was irrevocably convinced that it would be madness 
to resign his hard-won post without a struggle. For that it 
would long remain empty, he did not for a moment delude 
himself. 

They hardly exchanged a word during the remainder of the 
evening. His mouth was dry. Carmen, and her gaudy fate, 
drove past him like the phantasmagoria of a sleepless night. 

When the opera was over, and they stood waiting for the 
crowd to thin, he scanned his companion’s face with anxiety, to 
discover her mood. With her hand on the wire ledge, Louise 
watched the slow fall of the iron curtain. Her eyes were heavy ; 
she still lived in what she had seen. 

Her preoccupation continued as they crossed the square; 
her movements were listless. Maurice’s thoughts went back to 
a similar night, a year ago, when, for the first time, he had 
walked at her side: it had been just such a warm, lilac- 
scented night as this, and then, as now, he had braced himself 
up to speak. At that time he had known her but slightly; 
perhaps, for that very reason, he had been bolder in taking the 
plunge. 

He turned and looked at her. Her face was averted: he 
could only see the side of her cheek, and the clear-cut line of 
her chin. 

“Are you tired, Louise?” he asked, and, in the protective 
tenderness of his tone, her name sounded like a term of endear- 
ment. 

She made a vague gesture, which might signify either yes 
or no. 

“ It was too hot for you up there, to-night,” he went on. 
“ Next time, I shall take you a seat downstairs — as I’ve always 
wanted to.” As she still did not respond, he added, in a 
changed voice: “Altogether, though, it will be better for you 
to get accustomed to going alone to the theatre.” 

She turned at this, with an indolent curiosity. “Why?” 


34^ 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Because — why, because it will soon be necessary. I’m 
going away.” 

He had made a beginning now, clumsily, and not as he had 
intended, but it was made, and he would stand fast. 

“You are going away?” 

She said each word distinctly, as if she doubted her ears. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Why, Maurice? ” 

“ For several reasons. It’s not a new decision. I’ve been 
thinking about it for some time.” 

“ Indeed? Then why choose just to-night to tell me? — 
you’ve had plenty of other chances. And to-night I had en- 
joyed the theatre, and the music, and coming out into the 
air . . . ” 

“ I’m sorry. But I’ve put it off too long as it is. I ought 
to have told you before. — Louise . . . you must see that things 
can’t go on like this any longer? ” 

His voice begged her for once to look at the matter as he did. 
But she heard only the imperative. 

“ Must? ” she repeated. “ I don’t see — not at all.” 

“ Yes. — For your sake, I must go.” 

“ Ah ! — that makes it clearer. People have been talking, 
have they? Well, let them talk.” 

“ I can’t hear you spoken of in that way.” 

“ Oh, you’re very good. But if we, ourselves, know that 
what’s being said is not true, what can it matter ? ” 

“ I refuse to be the cause of it.” 

“ Do you, indeed? ” She laughed. “ You refuse? After do- 
ing all you can to make yourself indispensable, you now say: get 
on as best you can alone; I’ve had enough; I must go. — Don’t 
say it’s on my account — that the thought of yourself is not at 
the bottom of it — for I wouldn’t believe you though you did.” 

“ I give you my word, I have only thought of you. I meant 
it ... I mean it, for the best.” 

She quickened her steps, and he saw that she was nervously 
worked up. 

“ No man can want to injure the woman he respects — as I 
respect you.” 

Her shoulders rose, in her own emotional way. 

“ But tell me one thing,” he begged, as she walked in- 
exorable before him. “ Say it will matter a little to you if I 
go — that you will miss me — if ever so little . . . Louise ! ” 

“Miss you? What does it matter whether I miss you or 


MAURICE GUEST 


347 


not? It seems to me that counts least of all. You, at any 
rate, will have acted properly. You will have nothing to re- 
proach yourself with. — Oh, I wouldn’t be a man for anything 
on earth! You are all — all alike. I hate you and despise 
you — every one of you! ” 

They were within a few steps of the house. She pressed on, 
and, without looking back at him, or wishing him good-night, 
disappeared in the doorway. 


XII 


It was a hot evening in June: the perfume of the lilac, now in 
fullest bloom, lay over squares and gardens like a suspended 
wave. The sun had gone down in a cloudless sky; an hour 
afterwards, the pavements were still warm to the touch, and the 
walls of the buildings radiated the heat they had absorbed. 
The high old houses in the inner town had all windows set 
open, and the occupants leaned out on their window-cushions, 
with continental nonchalance. The big garden-cafes were 
filled to the last seat. In the woods, the midges buzzed round 
people’s heads in accompanying clouds; and streaks of treach- 
erous white mist trailed, like fixed smoke, over the low-lying 
meadow-land. 

Maurice and Louise had rowed to Connewitz; but so late 
in the evening that most of the variously shaped boats, with 
coloured lanterns at their bows, were returning when they 
started. 

Louise herself had proposed it. When he went to her that 
afternoon, he found her stretched on the sofa. A theatre-ticket 
lay on the table — for she had taken him at his word, and 
shown him that she could do without him. But to-night she 
had no fancy for the theatre: it was too hot. She looked very 
slight and young in her white dress; but was moody and out 
of spirits. 

On the way to Connewitz, they spoke no more than was 
necessary. Coming back, however, they had the river to them- 
selves; and she no longer needed to steer. He placed cushions 
for her at the bottom of the boat; and there she lay, with her 
hands clasped under her neck, watching the starry strip of sky, 
which followed them, between the tops of the trees above, 
like a complement of the river below. 

The solitude was unbroken; they might have gone down in 
the murky water, and no one would ever know how it had hap- 
pened : a snag caught unawares ; a clumsy movement in the light 
boat; half a minute, and all would be over. — Or, for the first 
and the last time in his life, he would take her in his arms, hold 
her to him, feel her cheek on his ; he would kiss her, with kisses 
that were at once an initiation and a farewell; then, covering 
her eyes with his hands, he would gently, very gently, tilt the 

348 


MAURICE GUEST 


349 


boat. A moment’s hesitation; it sought to right itself; rocked 
violently, and overturned : and beneath it, locked in each other’s 
arms, they found a common grave. . . . 

In fancy, he saw it all. Meanwhile, he rowed on, with long, 
leisurely strokes; and the lapping of the water round the oars 
was the only sound to be heard. 

At home, on the lid of his piano, lay the prospectuses of 
music-schools in other towns. They were still arriving, in 
answer to the impulsive letters he had written off, the night 
after the theatre. But the last to come had remained unopened. 
— He was well aware of it: his lingering on had all the ap- 
pearance of a weak reluctance to face the inevitable. For he 
could never make mortal understand what he had come through, 
in the course of the past week. He could no more put into 
words the isolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced — when 
nothing under the sun seemed impossible — than he could de- 
scribe the slough of misery and uncertainty, which, on occasion, 
he had been forced to wade through. For the most part, he 
believed that the words of contempt Louise had spoken, came 
straight from her heart; but he had also known the faint stir- 
ring of a new hope, and particularly was this the case when 
he had not seen Louise for some time. Then, at night, as he 
lay staring before him, this feeling became a sudden refulgence, 
which lighted him through all the dark hours, only to be re- 
morselessly extinguished by daylight. Most frequently, how- 
ever, it was so slender a hope as to be a mere distracting flutter 
at his heart. Whence it sprang, he could not tell — he knew 
Louise too well to believe, for a moment, that she would 
make use of pique to hide her feelings. But there was a some- 
thing in her manner, which was strained ; in the fact that she, 
who had never cared, should at length be moved by words of 
his; in a certain way she had looked at him, once or twice in 
these days; or in a certain way she had avoided looking at him. 
No, he did not know what it was. But nevertheless it was 
there — a faint, inarticulate existence — and, compared with it, 
the tangible facts of life were the shadows of a shadow. 

Surely she had fallen asleep. He said her name aloud, to 
try her. “ Louise ! ” She did not stir, and the word floated 
out into the night — became an expression of the night itself. 

They had passed the weir and its foaming, and now glided 
under the bridges that spanned the narrower windings of the 
river. The wooden bathing-house looked awesome enough to 
harbour mysteries. Another sharp turn, among sedge and rushes, 


350 


MAURICE GUEST 


and the outlying streets of the town were on their right. The 
boat-sheds were in darkness, when they drew up alongside the 
narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with the chain in his 
hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not follow immediately: 
her hair had come down, and she was stiff from the cramped 
position in which she had been lying. When she did rise to her 
feet, she could hardly stand. He put out his hand, and 
steadied her by the arm. 

“ A heavy dew must be falling. Your sleeve is wet.” 

She made a movement to draw her arm away; at the same 
moment, she tangled her foot in her skirt, tripped, and, if he 
had not caught her, would have fallen forward. 

“Take care what you’re doing! Do you want to drown 
yourself ? ” 

“ I don’t know. I shouldn’t mind, I think,” she answered 
tonelessly. 

His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had 
righted himself, he set her from him. But it could not be un- 
done: he had had her in his arms, had felt all her weight on 
him. The sensation seemed to take his strength away: after 
the long, black, silent evening, her body was doubly warm, 
doubly real. He walked her back, along the deserted streets, 
at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. She 
was very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost 
physical suffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; 
but when her eyes did chance to rest on him, she was swept by 
such a sense of nervous irritation that she hated the sight 
of him, as he walked before her. 

Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the 
sofa ; when the lamp was lighted and set on the table ; when he 
still stood there, pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise 
came to an abrupt decision. Advancing to the table, she 
leaned her hands on it, and bending forward, raised her white 
face to his. 

“ You told me you were going away; why do you not go? 
Why have you not already gone?” she asked, and her mouth 
was hard. “ I am waiting . . . expecting to hear.” 

His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous. 

“ Louise! — can’t you forgive me? — for what I said the other 
night?” 

“ I have nothing to forgive,” she replied, coldly in spite of 
Herself. “You said you must go. I can’t keep you here against 
your will.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


35i 

“ It has made you angry with me. I have made you un- 
happy.” 

“ You are making us both unhappy,” she said in a low voice. 
“ Now, it is I who say, things can’t go on like this.” 

“I know it.” He drew a deep breath. “Louise! . . . 
if only you could care a little! ” 

There was silence after these words, but not a silence of 
conclusion ; both knew now that more must follow. He raised 
his head, and looked into her eyes. 

“ Can you not see how I love you — and how I suffer? ” 

It was a statement rather than a question, but he was not 
aware of this: he was only amazed that, after all, he should 
be able to speak so quietly, in such an even tone of voice. 

There was another pause of suspense; his words seemed like 
balls of down that he had tossed into the still air: they sank, 
lingeringly, without haste; and she stood, and let them descend 
on her. His haggard eyes hung on her face; and, as he 
watched, he saw a change come over it: the enmity that had 
been in it, a few seconds back, died out; the lips softened and 
relaxed ; and when the eyes were raised to his again, they were 
kind, full of pity. 

“ I’m sorry. Poor boy . . . poor Maurice.” 

She seemed to hesitate; then, with one of her frankest ges- 
tures, held out her hand. At its touch, soft and living, he 
forgot everything: plans and resolutions, hopes and despairs, 
happiness and unhappiness no longer existed for him; he knew 
only that she was sorry for him, that some swift change in 
her had made her sympathise and understand. He looked 
down, with dim eyes, at the sweet, pale face, now alight 
with compassion; then, with disarming abruptness, he took 
her head between his hands, and kissed her, repeatedly, where- 
ever his lips chanced to fall — on the warm mouth, the closed 
eyes, temples, and hair. 

He was gone before she recovered from her surprise. She 
had instinctively stemmed her hands against his shoulders; but, 
when she was alone, she stood just as he left her, her eyes still 
shut, letting the sensation subside, of rough, unexpected kisses. 
She had been taken unawares; her heart was beating. For a 
moment or two, she remained in the same attitude; then she 
passed her hand over her face. “ That was foolish of him . . . 
very,” she said. She looked down at herself and saw her hands. 
She stretched them out before her, with a sudden sense of 
emptiness. 


352 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ If I could care! Yes — if I could only care! ” 

At two o’clock that morning, Maurice wrote: 

Forgive me — I didn't know what I was doing. For I love 
you , Louise — no woman has ever been loved as you are. I 
know it is folly on my part. I have nothing to offer you. But 
be my wife , and I will work my fingers to the bone for you. 

He went out into the summer night, and posted the letter. 
Returning to his room, he threw himself on the sofa, and fell 
into a heavy sleep, from which he did not wake till the morn- 
ing was well advanced. 

Work was out of the question that day, when he waited as if 
for a sentence of death. He paced his narrow room, incessantly, 
afraid to go out, for fear of missing her reply. The hours 
dragged themselves by, as it is their special province to do in 
crises of life; and with each one that passed, he grew more 
convinced what her answer to his letter would be. 

It was late in the afternoon when the little boy she em- 
ployed as a messenger, put a note into his hands. 

Come to me this evening . 

It was all but evening now; he went, just as he was, on the 
heels of the child. 

The windows of her room were open. She sprang up to 
meet him, then paused. He looked desperately yet stealthily at 
her. The commiseration of the previous night was still in her 
face; but she was now quite sure of herself: she drew him to 
the sofa and made him sit down beside her. Then, however, 
for a few seconds, in which he waited with hammering pulses, 
she did not speak. The dull fear at his heart became a cer- 
tainty; and, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he took 
one of her hands and laid it on his forehead. 

Then she said: “Maurice — poor, foolish Maurice! — it is 
not possible. You see that yourself, I’m sure.” 

“Yes. I know quite well: it is presumption.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean that. But there are so many reasons. 
And you, too, Maurice . . . Look at me, and tell me if 
what you wrote was not just an attempt to make up for what 
happened last night.” And as he did not reply, she added: 
“ You mustn’t make yourself reproaches. I, too, was to blame.” 

“ It was nothing of the sort. I’ve been trying for weeks 


MAURICE GUEST 


353 

now to tell you. I love you — have loved you since the first 
time I saw you.” 

He let go of her hand, and she sat forward, with her arms 
along her knees. Her eyes were troubled; but she did not lose 
her calm manner of speaking. “ I’m sorry, Maurice, very 
sorry — you believe me, don’t you, when I say so? But believe 
me, too, it’s not so serious as you think. You are young. You 
will get over it, and forget — if not soon, at least in time. You 
must forget me, and some day you will meet the nice, good 
woman, who is to be your wife. And when that happens, you 
will look back on your fancy for me as something foolish, and 
unreal. You won’t be able to understand it then, and you will 
be grateful to me, for not having taken you at your word.” 

Maurice laughed. All the same, he tried to take his dis- 
missal well: he rose, wrung her hand, and left her. 

In the seclusion of his own room, he went through the black- 
est hour of his life. 

He began to make final preparations for his departure. His 
choice had fallen on Stuttgart : it was far distant from Leipzig ; 
he would be well out of temptation’s way — the temptation 
suddenly to return. He wrote a letter home, apprising his 
relatives of his intention: by the time they received the letter, 
it would be too late for them to interfere. Otherwise, he took 
no one into his confidence. He would greatly have liked to 
wait until the present term was over; another month, and the 
summer vacation would have begun, and he would have been 
able to leave without making himself conspicuous. But every 
day it grew more impossible to be there and not to see her — 
for four days now he had kept away, fighting down his un- 
reasoning desire to know what she was doing. He intended 
only to see her once more, to bid her good-bye. 

The afternoon before his interview with Schwarz — he had 
arranged this with himself for the morning, at the master’s 
private house — he sat at his writing-table, destroying papers 
and old letters. There was a heap of ashes in the cold stove 
by the time he took out, tied up in a separate packet, the 
few odd scraps of writing he had received from Louise. He 
balanced the bundle in his hand, hesitating what to do with 
it. Finally, he untied the string, to glance through the letters 
once again. 

At the sight of the bold, black, familiar writing, in which 
each word — two or three to a line — seemed to have a life of 
its own; at the well-conned pages, each of which he knew by 


354 


MAURICE GUEST 


heart; at the characteristic, almost masculine signature, and the 
faint perfume that still clung to the paper: at the sight of these 
things all that he had been thinking and planning since seeing 
her last, was effaced from his mind. As often before, where 
she was concerned, a wild impulse, surging up in him, took 
entire possession of him; and hours of patient and laborious 
reasoning were by one swift stroke blotted out. 

He rose, locked the letters up again, rested his arm on the 
lid of the piano, his head on his arm. The more he toyed with 
his inclination to go to her, the more absorbent it became, and 
straightway it was an ungovernable longing: it came over him 
with a dizzy force, which made him close his eyes; and he was 
as helpless before it as the drunkard before his craving to drink. 
Standing thus, he saw with a flash of insight that, though he 
went away as far as steam could carry him, he would never, as 
long as he lived, be safe from overthrows of this kind. It was 
something elemental, which he could no more control than the 
flow of his blood. And he did not even stay to excuse himself 
to himself: he went headlong to her, with burning words on 
his lips. 

“ My poor boy,” she said, when he ceased to speak. “ Yes, 
I know what it is — that sudden rage that comes over one, to 
rush back, at all costs, no matter what happens afterwards. — 
I’m so sorry for you, Maurice. It is making me unhappy.” 

“You are not to be unhappy. It shall not happen again, I 
promise you. — Besides, I shall soon be gone now.” But at 
his own words, the thought of his coming desolation pierced 
him anew. “Give me just one straw to cling to! Tell me 
you won’t forget me all at once; that you will miss me and 
think of me — if ever so little.” 

“ You asked me that the other night. Was what I said then, 
not answer enough? — And besides, in these last four days, 
since I have been alone, I’ve learnt just how much I shall miss 
you, Maurice. It’s my punishment, I suppose, for growing so 
dependent on anyone.” 

“ You must go away, too. You can’t stay here by yourself. 
We must both go, in opposite directions, and begin afresh.” 

She did not reply at once. “ I shouldn’t know where to go,” 
she said, after a time. “ Will nothing else do, Maurice? Is 
there no other way? — Oh, why can’t we go on being friends, 
as we were! ” 

He shook his head. “ I’ve struggled against it so long — you 
don’t know. I’ve never really been your friend — only I 


MAURICE GUEST 


355 


couldn’t hurt you before, by telling you. And it has worn 
me out; I’m good for nothing. Louise! — think, just once more 
—ask yourself, once more, if it’s quite impossible, before you 
send me into the outer darkness.” 

She was silent. 

“ I don’t ask you to love me,” he went on, in a low voice. 
“ I’ve come down from that, in these wretched days. I would 
be content with less, much less. I only ask you to let your- 
self be loved — as I could love you. If only you could say you 
liked me a little, all the rest would come, I’m confident 
of it. In time, I should make you love me. For I would take, 
oh, such care of you! I want to make you happy, only to 
make you happy. I’ve no other wish than to show you what 
happiness is.” 

“ It sounds so good . . . you are good, Maurice. But the 
future — tell me, have thought of the future ? ” 

“ I should think I have. — Do you suppose it means nothing 
to me to be so despicably poor as I am? To have absolutely 
nothing to offer you? ” 

She took his hand. “ That’s not what I mean. And you 
know it. Come, let us talk sensibly this afternoon, and look 
things straight in the face. — You want to marry me, you say, 
and let the rest come? That is very, very good of you, and 
I shall never forget it. — But what does it mean, Maurice? 
You have been here a little over a year now, haven’t you? — 
and still have about a year to stay. When that’s over, you will 
go back to England. You will settle in some small place, 
and spend your life, or the best part of your life, there — oh, 
Maurice, you are my kind friend, but I tell you frankly, I 
couldn’t face life in an English provincial town. I’m not 
brave enough for that.” 

He gleaned a ray of hope from her words. u We could live 
here — anywhere you liked. I would make it possible. I swear 
I would.” 

She shook her head, and went on, with the same reasonable 
sweetness. “ And then, there’s another thing. If I married 
you, sooner or later you would have to take me home to your 
people. Have you really thought of that, and how you would 
feel about it, when it came to the point? — No, no, it’s impos- 
sible for me to marry you.” 

“ But that — that American ! — you would have married 
him?” 

“ That was different,” she said, and her voice grew thinner. 


MAURICE GUEST 


356 

“ It’s the knowing that tells, Maurice. You would have that 
still to learn. You don’t realise it yet, but afterwards, it would 
come home to you. — Listen! You have always been kind to 
me, I owe you such a debt of gratitude, that I’m going to be 
frank, brutally frank with you. I’ve told you often that 
I shall never really care for anyone again. You know that, 
don’t you? Well, I want to tell you, too — I want you to 
understand quite, quite clearly that . . . that I belonged to 
him altogether — entirely — that I . . . Oh, you know what I 
mean ! ” 

Maurice covered his face with his hands. “ The past is the 
past. It should never be mentioned between us. It doesn’t 
matter — nothing matters now.” 

“ You say that — every one says that — beforehand,” she an- 
swered; and not only her words, but also her way of saying 

them, seemed to set her down miles away from him, on a lonely 
pinnacle of experience. “ Afterwards, you would think dif- 
ferently.” 

“ Louise, if you really cared, it would be different. You 
wouldn’t say such things, then — you would be only too glad 
not to say them.” 

In her heart she knew that he was right, and did not con- 
tradict him. The busy little clock on the writing-table ticked 
away a few seconds. With a jerk, Maurice rose to his feet. 
Louise remained sitting, and he looked down on her black head. 
His gaze’ was so insistent that she felt it, and raised her eyes. 
His forlorn face moved her. 

“Why is it — what is the matter with me? — that I must 
upset your life like this? I can’t bear to see you so unhappy. — 
And yet I haven’t done anything, have I? I have always been 
honest with you ; I’ve never made myself out to be better than 
I am. There must be something wrong with me, I think, that 
no one can ever be satisfied to be just my friend. — Yet with 
you I thought it was different. I thought things could go on 
as they were. Maurice, isn’t it possible? Say it is! Show me 
just one little spark of good in myself ! ” 

“ I’m not different from other men, Louise. I deluded my- 
self long enough, God knows! ” 

She made a despondent gesture, and turned away. “ Well, 

then, if either of us should go, I’m the one. You have your 
work. I do nothing; I have no ties, no friends — I never even 
seem to have been able to make acquaintances. And if I went, 
you could stay quietly on. In time, you would forget me. — 


MAURICE GUEST 


357 


If I only knew where to go! I am so alone, and it is all 
so hard. I shall never know what it is to be happy myself, 
or to make anyone else happy — never ! ” and she burst into 
tears. 

It was his turn now to play the comforter. Drawing a chair 
up before her, he took her hand, and said all he could think 
of to console her. He could bear anything, he told her, but to 
see her unhappy. All would yet turn out to be for the best. 
And, on one point, she was to set her mind at rest: her go- 
ing away would not benefit him in the least. He would never 
consent to stay on alone, where they had been so much together. 

“ I’ve nothing to look forward to, nothing,” she sobbed. 
“ There’s nothing I care to live for.” 

As soon as she was quieter, he left her. 

For an hour or more Louise lay huddled up on the sofa, 
with her face pressed to her arm. 

When she sat up again, she pushed back her heavy hair, and, 
clasping her hands loosely round her knees, stared before 
her with vacant eyes. But not for long; tired though she was, 
and though her head ached from crying, there was still a deep 
residue of excitement in her. The level beams of the sun were 
pouring blindly into the room; the air was dense and oppres- 
sive. She rose to her feet and moved about. She did not know 
what to do with herself: she would have liked to go out and 
walk; but the dusty, jarring light of the summer streets fright- 
ened her. She thought of music, of the theatre, as a remedy for 
the long evening that yawned before her: then dismissed the idea 
from her mind. She was in such a condition of restlessness, this 
night, that the fact of being forced to sit still between two other 
human beings, would make her want to scream. 

The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the 
opposite gardens was black, with copper edges, against the 
refulgence of the sky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and 
gazed fixedly at the stretch of red and gold, which, like the 
afterglow of a fire, flamed behind the trees. Her eyes were 
filled with it. She did not think or feel: she became one, by 
looking, with the sight before her. As she stood there, nothing 
of her existed but her two widely opened eyes; she was a 
miracle wrought by the sunset; she was the sunset — in one of 
those vacancies of mind, which all intense gazers know. 

How long she had remained thus she could not have told, 
when a strange thing happened to her. From some sub-con- 
scious layer of her brain, which started into activity because the 


MAURICE GUEST 


358 

rest of it was so passive, a small, still thought glided in, and took 
possession of her mind. At first, it was so faint that she hardly 
grasped it; but, once established there, it became so vivid that, 
with one sweep, it blotted out trees and sunset; so real that it 
seemed always to have been present to her. Without conscious 
effort on her part, the solution to her difficulties had been 
found; a decision had been arrived at, but not by her; it was 
the work of some force outside herself. 

She turned from the window, and pressed her hands to her 
blinded eyes. Good God! it was so simple. To think that 
this had not occurred to her before! — that, throughout the 
troubled afternoon, the idea had never once suggested itself! 
There was no need of loneliness and suffering for either of them. 
He might stay; they both might stay; she could make him 
happy, and ward off the change she so dreaded. — Who was 
she to stick at it? 

But she remained dazed, doubtful as it were of this peace- 
ful ending; her hand still covered her eyes. Then, with one 
of the swift movements by which it was her custom to turn 
thought into action, she went to the writing-table, and scrawled 
a few, big words. 

Maurice, 1 have found a way . Come back to-morrow 

evening . 

She hesitated only over the last two words, and, before writ- 
ing them, sat with her chin in her hand, and deliberately con- 
sidered. Then she addressed the envelope, and stamped it: it 
would be soon enough if he got it through the post, the follow- 
ing morning. 

But, with her, to resolve was to act; she was ill at ease 
under enforced procrastination; and had often to fight against 
a burning impatience, when circumstances delayed the immedi- 
ate carrying out of her will. In this case, however, she had 
voluntarily postponed Maurice’s return for twenty-four hours, 
when he might have been with her in less than one: for, in her 
mind, there lurked the seductive thought of a long, summer 
day, with an emotion at its close to which she could look for- 
ward. 

In the meantime, she was puzzled how to fill up the evening. 
After all, she decided to go to the theatre, where she arrived 
in time to hear the last two acts of Aida, From a seat in the 
parquet, close to the orchestra, she let the showy music play 


MAURICE GUEST 


359 

round her. Afterwards, she walked home through the lilac- 
haunted night, went to bed, and at once fell asleep. 

Next morning, she wakened early — that was the sole token 
of disturbance, she could detect in herself. It was very still; 
there was a faint twittering of birds, but the noises of the 
street had not yet begun. She lay in the subdued yellow light 
of her room, with one arm across her eyes. 

Fresh from sleep, she understood certain things as never be- 
fore. She saw all that had happened of late — her slow re- 
covery, her striving and seeking, her growing friendship with 
Maurice — in a different light. On this morning, too, she was 
able to answer one of the questions that had puzzled her the 
night before. She saw that the relations in which they had 
stood to each other, during the bygone months, would have 
been impossible, had she really cared for him. She liked him, 
yes, had always liked him; and, in addition, his patience and 
kindness had made her deeply grateful to him. But that was 
all. Neither his hands, nor his voice, nor his eyes, nor any- 
thing he did, had had the power to touch her — so to touch her, 
that her own hands and eyes would have met his half-way; that 
the old familiar craving, which was partly fear and partly at- 
traction, would have made her callous to his welfare. Had there 
been a breath of this, things would have come to a climax long 
ago. Hot and eager as she was, she could not have lived on 
coolly at his side — and, at this moment, she found it difficult 
to make up her mind whether she admired Maurice or the re- 
verse, for having been able to carry his part through. 

And yet, though no particle of personal feeling drew her to 
him, she, too, had suffered, in her own way, during these weeks 
of morbid tension, when he had been incapable either of ad- 
vancing or retreating. How great the strain had been, she 
recognised only in the instant when he had spanned the breach, 
in clear, unmistakable words. If he had not done it, she 
would have been forced to; for she could never find herself to 
rights, for long, in half circumstances: if she were not to grow 
bewildered, she had to see her road simple and straight before 
her. His words to her after they had been on the river to- 
gether — more, perhaps, his bold yet timid kisses — had given her 
back strength and assurance. She was no longer the miserable 
instrument on which he tried his changes of mood; she was 
again the giver and the bestower, since she held a heart and a 
heart’s happiness in the hollow of her hand. 

What people would think and say was a matter of indif- 


MAURICE GUEST 


360 

ference to her: besides, they practically believed the worst of her 
already. No; she had nothing to lose and, it might be, much to 
gain. And after all, it meant so little! The first time, per- 
haps; or if one cared too much. But in this case, where she 
had herself well in hand, and where there was no chance of the 
blind desire to kill self arising, which had been her previous 
undoing; where the chief end aimed at was the retention of a 
friend — here, it meant nothing at all. 

The thought that she might possibly have scruples on his 
part to combat, crossed her mind. She stretched her arm 
straight above her head, then laid it across her eyes again. She 
would like him none the less for these scruples, did they exist: 
now, she believed that, at heart, she had really appreciated his 
reserve, his holding back, where others would have been so 
ready to pounce in. For the first time, she considered him 
in the light of a lover, and she saw him differently. As if the 
mere contemplation of such a change brought her nearer to him, 
she was stirred by a new sensation, which had him as its object. 
And under the influence of this feeling, she told herself that 
perhaps just in this gentler, kindlier love, which only sought 
her welfare, true happiness lay. She strained to read the 
future. There would be storms neither of joy nor of pain; 
but watchful sympathy, and the fine, manly tenderness that 
shields and protects. Oh, what if after all her passionate crav- 
ing for happiness, it was here at her feet, having come to her 
as good things often do, unexpected and unsought! 

She could lie still no longer; she sprang up, with an alacrity 
that had been wanting in her movements of late. And through- 
out the long day, this impression, which was half a hope and 
half a belief was present to her mind, making everything she 
did seem strangely festive. She almost feared the moment when 
she would see him again, lest anything he said should dissipate 
her hope. 

When he came, her eyes followed him searchingly. With an 
instinct that was now morbidly sharpened, Maurice was aware 
of the change in her, even before he saw her eyes. His own 
were one devouring question. 

She made him sit down beside her. 

“What is it, Louise? Tell me — quickly. Remember, I’ve 
been all day in suspense,” he said, as seconds passed and she did 
not speak. 

“ You got my note then? ” 

“ What is it ? — what did you mean ? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


361 

“Just a little patience, Maurice. You take one’s breath 
away. You want to know everything at once. I sent for you 
because — oh, because ... I want you to let us go on being 
friends.” 

“ Is that all?” he cried, and his face fell. “When I have 
told you again and again that’s just what I can’t do? ” 

She smiled. “ I wish I had known you as a boy, Maurice — 
oh, but as quite a young boy! ” she said in such a changed 
voice that he glanced up in surprise. Whether it was the look 
she bent on him, or her voice, or her words, he did not 
know; but something emboldened him to do what he had often 
done in fancy: he slid to his knees before her, and laid his head 
on her lap. She began to smooth back his hair, and each time 
her hand came forward, she let it rest for a moment. — She 
wondered how he would look when he knew. 

“You can’t care for me, I know. But I would give my 
life to make you happy.” 

“ Why do you love me ? ” She experienced a new pleasure 
in postponing his knowing, postponing it indefinitely. 

“ How can I say? All I know is how I love you — and how 
I have suffered.” 

“ My poor Maurice,” she said, in the same caressing way. 
“ Yes, I shall always call you poor. — For the love I could give 
you would be worthless compared with yours.” 

“ To me it would be everything. — If you only knew how I 
have longed for you, and how I have struggled ! ” 

He took enough of her dress to bury his face in. She sat 
back, and looked over him into the growing dusk of the room: 
and, in the alabaster of her face, nothing seemed to live except 
her black eyes, with the half-rings of shadow. 

Suddenly, with the unexpectedness that marked her move- 
ments when she was very intent, she leant forward again, and, 
with her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand, said in a 
low voice: “ Is it for ever? ” 

“ For ever and ever.” 

“ Say it’s for ever.” She still looked past him, but her lips 
had parted, and her face wore the expression of a child’s listen- 
ing to fairy-tales. At her own words, a vista seemed to open 
up before her, and, at the other end, in blue haze, shone the 
great good that had hitherto eluded her. 

“ I shall always love you,” said the young man. “ Nothing 
can make any difference.” 

“ For ever,” she repeated. “ They are pretty words.” 


362 MAURICE GUEST 

Then her expression changed; she took his head between her 
hands. 

“ Maurice . . . I’m older than you, and I know better than 
you, what all this means. Believe me, I’m not worth your 
love. I’m only the shadow of my old self. And you are still 
so young and so ... so untried. There’s still time to turn 
back, and be wise.” 

He raised his head. 

“What do you mean? Why are you saying these things? 
I shall always love you. Life itself is nothing to me, without 
you. I want you . . . only you.” 

He put his arms round her, and tried to draw her to him. 
But she held back. At the expression of her face, he had a 
moment of acute uncertainty, and would have loosened his hold. 
But now it was she who knotted her hands round his neck, 
and gave him a long, penetrating look. He was bewildered ; he 
did not understand what it meant; but it was something so 
strange that, again, he had the impulse to let her go. She bent 
her head, and laid her face against his; cheek rested on cheek. 
He took her face between his hands, and stared into her eyes, 
as if to tear from them what was passing in her brain. Over 
both, in the same breath, swept the warm, irresistible wave of 
self-surrender. He caught her to him, roughly and awkwardly, 
in a desperate embrace, which the kindly dusk veiled and 
redeemed. 


XIII 


“ Now you will not leave me, Maurice ? ” 

“ Never . . . while I live.” 

“ And you . . 

“ No. Don’t ask me yet. I can’t tell you.” 

“ Maurice! ” 

“Forgive me! Not yet. That after all you should care a 
little ! After all . . . that you should care so much ! ” 

“ And it is for ever? ” 

“ For ever and ever . . . what do you take me for? But 
not here ! Let us go away — to some new place. We will make 
it our very own.” 

Their words came in haste, yet haltingly; were all but in- 
audible whispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief 
cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being 
cut adrift and thrown on each other’s mercy. 

Louise raised her head. 

“ Yes, we will go away. But now, Maurice — at once! ” 

“ Yes. To-night . . . to-morrow . . . when you like.” 

The next morning, he set out to find a place. Three weeks 
of the term had still to run, and he was to have played in an 
Abendunterhaltung, before the vacation. But, compared with 
the emotional upheaval he had undergone, this long-anticipated 
event was of small consequence. To Schwarz, he alleged 
a succession of nervous headaches, which interfered with his 
work. His looks lent colour to the statement; and though, as 
a rule, highly irritated by opposition to his plans, Schwarz 
only grumbled in moderation. He would have let no one else 
off so easily, and, at another time, the knowledge of this would 
have rankled in Maurice, as affording a fresh proof of the 
master’s indifference towards him. As it was, he was thank- 
ful for the freedom it secured him. 

On the strength of a chance remark of Madeleine’s, which he 
had remembered, he found what he looked for, without dif- 
ficulty. It could not have been better: a rambling inn, with 
restaurant, set in a clearing on the top of a wooded hill, with 
an open view over the undulating plains. 

That night, he wrote to Louise from the Rochlitzer Berg, 
painting the nest he had found for them in glowing colours, 

363 


MAURICE GUEST 


364 

and begging her to come without delay. But the whole of the 
next day passed without a word from her, and the next again, 
and not till the morning of the third, did he receive a note, 
announcing her arrival for shortly after midday. He took it 
with him to the woods, and lay at full length on the moss. 

Although he had been alone now for more than forty-eight 
hours — a July quiet reigned over the place — he had not managed 
to think connectedly. He was still dazed, disbelieving of what 
had happened. Again and again he told himself that his dreams 
and hopes — which he had always pushed forward into a vague 
and far-off future — had actually come to pass. She was his, 
all his ; she had given herself ungrudgingly : as soon as he could 
make it possible, she would be his wife. But, in the mean- 
time, this was all he knew: his nearer vision was obstructed 
by the stupefying thought of the weeks to come. She was to 
be there, beside him, day after day, in a golden paradise of love. 
He could only think of it with moist eyes ; and he swore to him- 
self that he would repay her by being more infinitely careful 
of her than ever man before of the woman he loved. But 
though he repeated this to himself, and believed it, his feel- 
ings had unwittingly changed their pole. On his knees before 
her, he had vowed that her happiness was the end of all his 
pleading; now it was frankly happiness he sought, the happi- 
ness of them both, but, first and foremost, happiness. And it 
could hardly have been otherwise: the one unpremeditated 
mingling of their lives had killed thought; he could only feel 
now, and, throughout these days, he was conscious of each move- 
ment he made, as of a song sung aloud. He wandered up and 
down the wooded paths, blind to everything but the image of 
her face, which was always with him, and oftenest as it had 
bent over him that last evening, with the strange new fire in 
its eyes. Closing his own, he felt again her arms on his shoul- 
ders, her lips meeting his, and, at such moments, it could happen 
that he threw his arms round a tree, in an ungovernable rush 
of longing. Beyond the moment when he should clasp her to 
him again, he could not see : the future was as indistinct as were 
the Saxon plains, in the haze of morning or evening. 

He set out to meet her far too early in the day, and when 
he had covered the couple of miles that lay between the inn on 
the hill and the railway-station at the foot, he was obliged to 
loiter about the sleepy little town for over an hour. But 
gradually the time ticked away ; the hands of his watch pointed 
to a quarter to two, and presently he found himself on the 


MAURICE GUEST 


365 

shadeless, sandy station which lay at the end of a long, sandy 
street, edged with two rows of young and shadeless trees ; found 
himself looking along the line of rail that was to bring her 
to him. Would the signal never go up? He began to feel, in 
spite of the strong July sunlight, that there was something 
illusive about the whole thing.- Or perhaps it was just this 
harsh, crude light, without relieving shadows, which made 
his surroundings seem unreal to him. However it was, the 
nearer the moment came when he would see her again, the 
more improbable it seemed that the train, which w^as even now 
overdue, should actually be carrying her towards him — her to 
him! He would yet waken, with a shock. Rut then, coming 
round a corner in the distance, at the side of a hill, he saw 
the train. At first it appeared to remain stationary, then it 
increased in size, approached, made a slight curve, and was a 
snaky line; it vanished, and reappeared, leaving first a white 
trail of cloud, then thick rounded puffs of cloud, until it was 
actually there, a great black object, with a creak and a rattle. 

He had planted himself at the extreme end of the platform, 
and the carriages went past him. He hastened, almost running, 
along the train. At the opposite end, a door was opened, the 
porter took out some bags, and Louise stepped down, and 
turned to look for him. He was the only person on the sta- 
tion, besides the two officials, and in passing she had caught a 
glimpse of his face. If he looks like that, every one will know, 
she thought to herself, and her first words, as he came breath- 
lessly up, were: “ Maurice, you mustn’t look so glad! ” 

He had never really seen her till now, when, in a white 
dress, with eyes and lips alight, she stood alone with him on the 
wayside platform. To curb his first, impetuous gesture, Louise 
had stretched out both her hands. He stood holding them, 
unable to take his eyes from her face. At her movement to 
withdraw them, he stooped and kissed them. 

“ Not look glad? Then you shouldn’t have come.” 

They left her luggage to be sent up later in the day, and set 
out on their walk. Going down the shadeless street, and 
through the town, she was silent. At first, as they went, 
Maurice pointed out things that he thought would interest 
her, and spoke as if he attached importance to them. While, 
in reality, nothing mattered, now that she was beside him. And 
gradually, he, too, lapsed into silence, walking by her side 
across the square, and through the narrow streets, with the 
solemnly festive feelings of a child on Sunday. They crossed 


MAURICE GUEST 


366 

the moat, passed through the gates and courtyard of the old 
castle, and began to ascend the steep path that was a short-cut 
to the woods. It was exposed to the full glare of the sun, 
and, on reaching the sheltering trees, Louise gave a sigh of re- 
lief, and stood still to take off her hat. 

“ It’s so hot. And I like best to be bareheaded.” 

“ Yes, and now I can see you better. Is it really you, at 
last? I still can’t believe it. — That you should have come to 
me!” 

“ Yes, I’m real,” she smiled, and thrust the pins through the 
crown of the hat. “ But very tired, Maurice. It was so hot, 
and the train was so slow.” 

“Tired? — of course, you must be. Come, there’s a seat just 
round this corner. You shall rest there.” 

They sat, and he laid his arm along the back of the bench. 
With his left hand he turned her face towards him. “ I must 
see you. I expect every minute to wake and find it’s not true.” 

“And yet you haven’t even told me you’re glad to see me.” 

“Glad? No. Glad is only a word.” 

She leaned lightly against the protective pressure of his arm. 
On one of her hands lying in her lap, a large spot of sunlight 
settled. He stooped and put his lips to it. She touched his head. 

“Were the days long without me?” 

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” 

Not that he cared, or even cared to know, now that she was 
there. But he wanted to hear her speak, to remember that he 
could now have her voice in his ears, whenever he chose. But 
Louise was not disposed to talk; the few words she said, fell 
unwillingly from her lips. The stillness of the forest laid its 
spell upon them: each faint rustling among the leaves was 
audible; not a living thing stirred except themselves. The tall 
firs and beeches stretched infinitely upwards, and the patches of 
light that lay here and there on the moss, made the cool darkness 
seem darker. 

When they walked on again, Maurice put his arm through 
hers, and, in. this intimacy of touch, was conscious of every step 
she took. It made him happy to suit his pace to hers, to draw 
her aside from a spreading root or loose stone, and to feel her 
respond to his pressure. She walked for the most part languidly, 
looking to the ground. But at a thickly wooded turn of the 
path, where it was very dark, where the sunlight seemed far 
away, and the pine-scent was more pungent than elsewhere, she 
stopped, to drink in the spicy air with open lips and nostrils. 


MAURICE GUEST 


367 

“ It’s like wine. Maurice, I’m glad we came here — that 
you found this place. Think of it, we might still be sitting in- 
doors, with the blinds drawn, knowing that the pavements were 
baking in the sun. While here! . . . Oh, I shall be happy 
here! ” 

She was roused for a moment to a rapturous content with 
her surroundings. She looked childishly happy and very young. 
Maurice pressed her arm, without speaking: he was so foolishly 
happy that her praise of the place affected him like praise of 
himself. Again, he had a chastened feeling of exhilaration: 
as though an acme of satisfaction had been reached, beyond 
which it was impossible to go. 

On catching sight of the rambling wooden building, in the 
midst of the clearing that had been made among the encroaching 
trees, Louise gave another cry of pleasure, and before entering 
the house, went to the edge of the terrace, and looked down 
on the plains. But upstairs, in her room on the first storey, 
he made her rest in an arm-chair by the window. He himself 
prepared the tea, proud to perform the first of the trivial serv- 
ices which, from now on, were to be his. There was nothing 
he would not do for her, and, as a beginning, he persuaded her 
to lie down on the sofa and try to sleep. 

Once outside again, he did not know how to kill time; and 
the remainder of the afternoon seemed interminable. He endeav- 
oured to read, but could not take in the meaning of two con- 
secutive sentences. He was afraid to go far away, in case she 
should wake and miss him. So he loitered about in the vicinity of 
the house, and returned every few minutes, to see if her blind 
were not drawn up. Finally, he sat down at one of the tables 
on the terrace, where he had her window in sight. Towards 
six o’clock, his patience was exhausted; going upstairs, he list- 
ened outside the door of her room. Not a sound. With in- 
finite precaution, he turned the handle, and looked in. 

She was lying just as he had left her, fast asleep. Her head 
was a little on one side; her left hand was under her cheek, 
her right lay palm upwards on the rug that covered her. 
Maurice sat down in the arm-chair. 

At first, he looked furtively, afraid of disturbing her; then 
more openly, in the hope that she would waken. Sitting thus, 
and thinking over the miracle that had happened to him, he 
now sought to find something in her face for him alone, which 
had previously not been there. But his thoughts wandered as 
he gazed. How he loved it! — this face of hers. He was in- 


MAURICE GUEST 


368 

variably worked on afresh by the blackness of the lustreless 
hair; by the pale, imperious mouth; by the dead white pallor 
of the skin, which shaded to a dusky cream in the curves of 
neck and throat, and in the lines beneath the eyes was of a 
bluish brown. Now the lashes lay in these encircling rings. 
Without doubt, it was the eyes that supplied life to the face: 
only when they were open, and the lips parted over the strong 
teeth, was it possible to realise how intense a vitality was latent 
in her. But his love would wipe out the last trace of this wan 
tiredness. He would be infinitely careful of her: he would 
shield her from the impulsiveness of her own nature ; she should 
never have cause to regret what she had done. And the affec- 
tion that bound them would day by day grow stronger. All his 
work, all his thoughts, should belong to her alone; she would 
be his beloved wife; and through him she would learn what 
love really was. 

He rose and stood over her, longing to share his feelings with 
her. But she remained sunk in her placid sleep, and as he 
stood, he became conscious of a different sensation. He had 
never seen her face — except convulsed by weeping — when it 
was not under full control. Was it because he had stared so 
long at it, or was it really changed in sleep ? There was some- 
thing about it, at this moment, which he could not explain: it 
almost looked less fine. The mouth was not so proudly reticent 
as he had believed it to be ; there was even a want of restraint 
about it; and the chin had fallen. He did not care to see it 
like this: it made him uneasy. He stooped and touched her hand. 
She started up, and could not remember where she was. She 
put both hands to her forehead. “ Maurice! — what is it? Have 
I been asleep long? ” 

He held his watch before her eyes. With a cry she sprang 
to her feet. Then she sent him downstairs. 

They were the only guests. They had supper alone in a 
longish room, at a little table spread with a coloured cloth. The 
window was open behind them, and the branches of the trees 
outside hung into the room. In honour of the occasion, Maurice 
ordered wine, and they remained sitting, after they had finished 
supper, listening to the rustling and swishing of the trees. The 
only drawback to the young man’s happiness was the perti- 
nacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. She lingered 
after she had served them, and stared so hard that Maurice 
turned at length and asked her what the matter was. 

The girl coloured to the roots of her hair. 


MAURICE GUEST 369 

** Ach, Fraulein is so pretty,” she answered naively, in her 
broad Saxon dialect. 

Both laughed, and Louise asked her name, and if she 
always lived there. Thus encouraged, Amalie, a buxom, thick- 
set person, with a number of flaxen plaits, came forward and 
began to talk. Her eyes were fixed on Louise, and she only 
occasionally glanced from her to the young man. 

“ It’s nice to have a sweetheart,” she said suddenly. 

Louise laughed again and coloured. “ Haven’t you got one. 
Amalie ? ” 

Amalie shook her head, and launched out into a tale of faith- 
lessness and desertion. “Yes, if I were as pretty as you, Frau- 
lein, it would be a different thing,” she ended, with a hearty 
sigh. 

Maurice clattered up from the table. “ All right, Amalie, 
that’ll do.” 

They went out of doors, and strolled about in the twilight. 
He had intended to show her some of the pretty nooks in the 
neighbourhood of the house. But she was not as affable with 
him as she had been with Amalie; she walked at his side with 
an air of preoccupied indifference. 

When they sat down on a seat, on the side of the hill, the 
moon had risen. It was almost at the full, and a few gently 
sailing scraps of cloud, which crossed it, made it seem to be 
coming towards them. The plains beneath were veiled in haze ; 
detached sounds mounted from them : the prolonged barking of 
a dog, the drone of an approaching train. Round about them, 
the air was heavy with the scent of the sun-warmed pines. 
Maurice had taken her hand and sat holding it: it was the 
one thing that existed for him. All else was vague and un- 
real: only their two hearts beat in all the universe. But there 
was no interchange between them of binding words or endear- 
ments, such as pass between most lovers. 

How long they sat, neither could have told. But suddenly, 
far below, a human voice was raised in a long cry, which echoed 
against the side of the hill. Louise shivered: and he had a 
moment of apprehension. 

“ You’re cold. We have sat too long. Let us go.” 

They rose, and walked slowly back to the house. 

Although the doors were still open, the building was in dark- 
ness, and they had to grope their way up the stairs. Outside 
her room, he paused to light the candle that was standing on the 
table, but Louise opened the door and went in. As she did so, 


370 


MAURICE GUEST 


she gave a cry. The blind had not been lowered, and a patch 
of greenish-white moonlight lay on the floor before the window, 
throwing the rest of the room into massy shadow. She went 
forward and stood in it. 

“ Don’t make a light,” she said to him over her shoulder. 

Maurice put down the matches, with which he had been fum- 
bling, went quickly in after her, and shut the door. 

Before anyone else was astir, he had flung out into the fresh- 
ness of the morning. It was cool in the shade of the woods; 
grass and moss were a little moist with dew. He did not linger 
under the trees; he needed movement; and striding along the 
driving-road, which ran down the hill where the incline was 
easiest, he went out on the plains, among the little villages that 
dotted the level land like huge clumps of mushrooms. He car- 
ried his cap in his hand, and let the early sun play on his head. 

When he returned, it was nine o’clock, and he was ravenously 
hungry. Amalie carried the coffee and the crisp brown rolls to 
one of the small tables on the terrace, and herself stood, after 
she had served him, and looked over the edge of the hill. When 
he had finished eating, he opened a volume of Dichtung und 
Wahrheit , which he carried in his pocket, and began to read. 
But after a few lines, his thoughts wandered; the book had a 
chilling effect on him in his present mood ; the writing seemed 
stiff and strained — the work of a very old man. 

At first, that morning, he had not ventured to review even in 
thought the past hours. Now, however, that he was again 
within a stone’s throw of Louise, memories crowded upon him ; 
he gazed, with a passion of gratefulness, at her window. One 
detail stood out more vividly than all the rest. It was that 
of waking suddenly at dawn, from a dreamless sleep, and of 
finding on his pillow, a thick tress of black ruffled hair. For 
a moment, he had hardly been able to believe his eyes ; and even 
yet, the mere remembrance of this dusky hair on the pillow’s 
whiteness, seemed to bring what had happened home to him, as 
nothing else could have done. 

She had slept on, undisturbed, and she was still asleep, to 
judge from the lowered blind. But though hours seemed to pass 
while he sat there, he was not dissatisfied; it was enough to 
know how near she was to him. 

When she came, she was upon him before he was aware of 
it. At the light step behind, he sprang from his seat. 

“At last!” 


MAURICE GUEST 371 

“ Are you tired of waiting for me? ” 

She was in the same white dress, and a soft-brimmed hat fell 
over her forehead. He did not answer her words; for Amalie 
followed on her heels with fresh coffee, and made a great busi- 
ness of re-setting the table. 

“ Wunsche guten Appetit!” 

The girl retired to a distance, but still lingered, keeping them 
in sight. Maurice leaned across the table. “ Tell me how you 
are. Have you forgotten me? ” He tried to take her hand. 

“ Take care, Maurice. We can be seen here.” 

“ How that girl stares! Why doesn’t she go away? ” 

“ She is envying me my sweetheart again . . . who won’t 
let me eat my breakfast.” 

“ I’ve been alone for hours, Louise. Tell me what I want to 
know.” 

“ Yes — afterwards. The coffee is getting cold.” 

He sat back and watched her movements, with fanatic eyes. 
She was not confused by the insistence of his gaze ; but she did 
not return it. She was paler than usual ; and the lines beneath 
her eyes 'were blacker. Maurice believed that he could detect 
a new note in her voice this morning ; and he tried to make her 
speak, in order that he might hear it; but she was as chary of 
her words as of her looks. Attracted by the two strangers, a 
little child of the landlord’s came running up to stare shyly. She 
spread a piece of bread with honey, and gave it to the child. He 
was absurdly jealous, and she knew it. 

For the rest of the morning, she would have been content to 
bask in the sun, but when she saw how impatient he was, she 
gave way, and they went out of the sight of other people, into 
the friendly, screening woods. 

“ I thought you would never come.” 

“ Why didn’t you wake me? Oh, gently, Maurice! You for- 
get that I’ve just done my hair.” 

“ To-day I shall forget everything. Let me look at you 
again . . . right into your eyes.” 

“ To-day you believe I’m real, don’t you? Are you satisfied ? ” 

“ And you, Louise, you ? — Say you’re happy, too ! ” 

They came upon the Friedrich August Turm, a stone tower, 
standing on the highest point of the hill, beside a large quarry ; 
and, too idly happy to refuse, climbed the stone steps, led by a 
persuasive old pensioner, who, on the platform at the top, ad- 
justed the telescope, and pointed out the distant landmarks, with 
something of an owner’s pride. On this morning, Maurice 


372 


MAURICE GUEST 


would not have been greatly surprised to hear that the streaky 
headline of the Dover coast was visible: he had eyes for her 
alone, as, with assumed interest, she followed the old man’s 
hand, learned where Leipzig lay, and how, on a clear day, its 
many spires could be distinguished. 

“ Over there, Maurice ... a little more to the right. How 
far away we seem ! ” 

Leaning against the parapet, he continued to look at her. 
The few ordinary words meant in reality something quite dif- 
ferent. It was as if she had said to him: “ Yes, yes, be at rest — 
I am still yours ; ” and he told himself, with a feverish pleasure, 
that, from now on, everything she said in the presence of others 
would be a cloak for what she really meant to say. He had 
been right, there was a new tone in her voice this morning, 
an imperceptible vibration, a sensuous undertone, which seemed 
to have been left over from those moments when it had quivered 
like a roughly touched string beneath a bow. Going down the 
steps behind her, he heard her dress swish from step to step, and 
saw the fine grace of her strong, supple body. At a bend in the 
stair, he held her back and kissed her neck, just where the hair 
stopped growing. On the ground-floor, she paused to pick out 
a trifle from a table set with mementoes. The old man praised 
his wares with zeal, taking up this and that in his old, reddened 
hands, on which the skin was drawn and glazed, like a coating 
of gelatine. Louise chose a carved wooden pen; a tiny round 
of glass was set in the handle, through which might be seen a 
view of the tower, with an encircling motto. 

After this, he had her to himself, for the rest of the day. 
They sat on a seat that was screened by trees, and thickly grown 
about. His arm lay along the back of the bench, and every now 
and then his hand sought and pressed the warm, soft round of 
her shoulder. In this attitude, he poured out his heart to her. 
Hitherto, the very essence of his love had been taciturn en- 
durance; now, he felt how infinitely much he had to say to 
her: all that he had undergone since knowing her first, all the 
hopes and feelings that had so long been pent up in him, strug- 
gled to escape. Now, there was no hindrance to his telling her 
everything ; it was not only permissible, but right that he should : 
henceforth there must be no strangeness between them, no 
knowledge, pleasant or unpleasant, that she did not share. And 
he went back, and dwelt on details and events long past, which, 
unknown to himself, his memory had stored up; but it was 
chiefly the restless misery of the past half year that was his theme 


MAURICE GUEST 


373 


— he took the same pleasure in reciting it, now that it was over, 
as the convalescent in relating his sufferings. Besides that, it 
was easier, there being nothing to conceal ; whereas, in referring 
to an earlier time, a certain name had to be shirked and gone 
round about, like a plague-spot. His impassioned words knew 
no halt ; he was amazed at his own eloquence. And the burden 
of months fell away from him as he talked. 

The receptiveness of her silence spurred him on. She sat 
motionless, with loosely clasped hands; and spots of light set- 
tled on her bare head, and on the white stuff of her dress. Occa- 
sionally, at something he said, a smile would raise the corners of 
her mouth ; sometimes, but less often, she turned her head with 
incredulous eyes. But, though she was emotionally so irrespon- 
sive, Maurice had the feeling that she was content, even happy, 
to sit inactive at his side, and listen to his story. 

Each of these first wonderful days was of the same pattern. 
They themselves lost count of time, so like was one day to 
another; and yet each that passed was a little eternity in itself. 
The weather was superb, and to them, in their egotism, it came 
to seem in the order of things that they should rise in the 
morning to cloudless skies and golden sunshine; that the cool 
green seclusion of the woods should be theirs, where they were 
more securely shut off from the world than inside the house. 
Louise lay on the moss, with her arms under her head, or sat 
with her back against a tree-trunk. Maurice was always in 
front of he:, so that he could see her face as he talked — this face 
of which he could never see enough. 

He was happy, in a dazed way; he could not appraise the 
extent of his happiness all at once. Its chief outward sign was 
the nervous flood of talk that poured from his lips — as though 
they had bem sealed and stopped for years. But Louise urged 
him on ; whit he had first felt dimly, he soon knew for certain : 
that she was never tired of learning how much he loved her, how 
he had hoped, and ventured, and despaired, and how he had 
been prepared to lose her, up to the very last day. She also 
made him describe to her more than once how he had first seen 
her: his indelible impression of her as she played; her appearance 
at his side in the concert-hall ; how he had followed her out and 
looked for he:, and had vainly tried to learn who she was. 

“ I stood quite close to you, you say, Maurice? Perhaps I 
even looked at you. How strange things are ! ” 

Still, the imerest she displayed was of a wholly passive kind ; 
she took no part herself in this building up of the past. She 


374 


MAURICE GUEST 


left it to him, just as she left all that called for firmness or 
decision, in this new phase of her life. The chief step taken, it 
seemed as if no further initiative were left in her; she let her- 
self be loved, waited for everything to come from him, was 
without will or wish. He had to ask no self-assertion of her 
now, no impulsive resolutions. Over all she did, lay a subtle 
languor; and her abandon was absolute — he heard it in the 
very way she said his name. 

In the first riotous joy of possession, Maurice had been con- 
scious of the change in. her as of something inexpressibly sweet 
and tender, implying a boundless faith in him. But, before long, 
it made him uneasy. He had imagined several things as likely 
to happen; had imagined her the cooler and wiser of the two, 
checking him and chiding him for his over-devotion ; had 
imagined even moments of self-reproach, on her part, when she 
came to think over what she had done. What he had not 
imagined was the wordless, unthinking fashion in which she 
gave herself into his hands. The very expression of her face 
altered in these days: the somewhat defiant, bitter lines he had 
so loved in it, and behind which she had screened herself, were 
smoothed out ; the lips seemed to meet differently, were sweeter, 
even tremulous ; the eyes were more veiled, far less sure of them- 
selves. He did not admit to himself how difficult she made 
things for him. Strengthened, from the first, by his gDod resolu- 
tions, he was determined not to let himself be carried off his feet. 
But it would have been easier for him to stand firm, had she met 
him in almost any other way than this — even with a frank re- 
turn of feeling, for then they might have spoken openly, and 
have helped each other. As it was, he had no thoughts but of 
her; his watchful tenderness knew no bounds; but the whole 
responsibility was his. It was he who had to maintain the happy 
mean in their relations; he to draw the line beyond which it was 
better for all their after-lives that they should rot go. He 
affirmed to himself more than once that he loved her the more 
for her complete subjection: it was in keeping with her open- 
handed nature which could do nothing by halves. Yet, as time 
passed, he began to suffer under it, to feel her absence of will as 
a disquieting factor — to find anything to which te could com- 
pare it, he had to hark back to the state she had been in when 
he first offered her aid and comfort. That was the lassitude 
of grief, this of ... he could not find a word. But it began 
to tell on him, and more than once made him a little sharp with 
her; for, at moments, he would be seized by an overpowering 


MAURICE GUEST 


375 


temptation to shake her out of her lassitude, to rouse her as he 
very well knew she could be roused. And then, strange desires 
awoke in him ; he did not himself know of what he was capable. 

One afternoon, they were in the woods as usual. It was very 
sultry; not a leaf stirred. Louise lay with her elbow on the 
moss-grown roots of a tree; her eyes were heavy. Maurice, be- 
fore her, smoked a cigarette, and watched for the least recogni- 
tion of his presence, thinking, meanwhile, that she looked better 
already for these days spent out-of-doors — the tiny lines round 
her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however, he grew 
restless under her protracted silence ; there was something omin- 
ous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her 
hand, began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink 
nails, or to gather them together, and let them drop, one by one, 
like warm, but lifeless things. 

“ What are you thinking of? ” he asked at last, and shut her 
hand firmly within his. 

She started. “I? . . . thinking? I don’t know. I wasn’t 
thinking at all.” 

“ But you were. I saw it in your face. Your thoughts were 
miles away.” 

“ I don’t know, Maurice. I couldn’t tell you now.” And 
a moment later, she added: “You think one must always be 
thinking, when one is silent.” 

“ Yes, I’m jealous of your thoughts. You tell me nothing of 

them. But now you have come back to me, and it’s all right.” 

He drew her nearer to him by the hand he held, and, putting 

his arm under her neck, bent her head back on the moss. Her 
stretched throat was marked by two encircling lines; he traced 
them with his finger. She lay and smiled at him. But her eyes 
remained shaded : they were meditative, and seemed to be con- 
sidering him, a little deliberately. 

“ Tell me, Louise,” he said suddenly; “ why do you look at 
me like that? It’s not the first time — I’ve seen it before. And 

then, I can’t help thinking there’s some mistake — that after all 
you don’t really care for me. It is so — so critical.” 

“ You are curious to-day, Maurice.” 

“ Yes. There’s so much I want to know, and you tell me 
nothing. It is I who talk and talk — till you must be tired of 
hearing me.” 

“ No, I like to listen best. And I have nothing to say.” 

“ Nothing? Really nothing? ” 

“ Only that I’m glad to be here — that I am happy.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


376 

He kissed her on the throat, the eyes and the lips ; kissed her, 
until, under his touch, that vague, elusive influence began to 
emanate from her, which, he was aware, might some day over- 
power him, and drag him down. They were quite alone, shut 
in by high trees ; no one would find them, or disturb them. And 
it was just this mysterious power in her that his nerves had 
dreamed of waking: yet now, some inexplicable instinct made 
him hesitate, and forbear. He drew his arm from under her 
head, and rose to his feet, where he stood looking down at her. 
She lay just as he had left her, and he felt unaccountably im- 
patient. 

“There it is again!” he cried. “You are looking at me 
just as you did before.” 

Louise passed her hand over her eyes, and sat up. “ Why, 
Maurice, what do you mean? It was nothing — only something 
I was trying to understand.” 

But what it was that she did not understand, he could not 
get her to tell him. 

A fortnight passed. One morning, when a soft south breeze 
was in motion, Maurice reminded her with an air of playful 
severity, that, so far, they had not learned to know even their 
nearer surroundings; while of all the romantic explorings in 
the pretty Muldental, which he had had in view for them, not 
one had been undertaken. Louise was not fond of walking in 
the country; she tired easily, and was always content to bask 
in the sun and be still. But she did not attempt to oppose his 
wish ; she put on her hat, and was ready to start. 

His love of movement reasserted itself. They went down the 
driving-road, and out upon the long, ribbon-like roads that 
zigzagged the plains, connecting the dotted villages. These 
roads were edged with fruit-trees — apple and cherry. The ap- 
ples were still hard, green, polished balls, but the berries were 
at their prime. And everywhere men were aloft on ladders, 
gathering the fruit for market. For the sum of ten pfennigs, 
Maurice could get his hat filled, and, by the roadside, they would 
sit down to make a second breakfast off black, luscious cherries, 
which stained the lips a bluish purple. When it grew too hot 
for the open roads, they descended the steep, wooded back of the 
hill, to the romantic little town of Wechselburg at its base. 
Here, a massive bridge of reddish-yellow stone spanned the wind- 
ing, slate-grey Mulde ; a sombre, many-windowed castle of the 
same stone as the bridge looked out over a wall of magnificent 
chestnuts. 


MAURICE GUEST 


377 


On returning from these, and various other excursions, they 
were pleasantly tired and hungry. After supper, they sat up- 
stairs by the window in her room, Louise in the big chair, 
Maurice at her feet, and there watched the darkness come down, 
over the tops of the trees. 

Somewhat later in the month, the fancy took her to go to a 
place called Amerika. Maurice consulted the landlord about the 
distance. Their original plan of taking the train a part of the 
way was, however, abandoned when the morning came; for it 
was an uncommonly lovely day, and a fresh breeze was blowing. 
So, having scrambled down to Wechselburg again, they struck 
out on the flat, and began their walk. The whole day lay be- 
fore them ; they were bound to no fixed hours ; and, throughout 
the morning, they made frequent halts, to gather the wild rasp- 
berries that grew by the roadside. Having passed under a great 
railway viaduct, which dominated the landscape, they stopped at 
a village inn, to rest and drink coffee. About two o’clock, they 
came to Rochsburg, and finally arrived, towards the middle of 
the afternoon, at the picturesque restaurant that bore the name 
of Amerika. Here they dined. Afterwards, they returned to 
Rochsburg, but much less buoyantly — for Louise was growing 
footsore — paid a bridge-toll, were shown through the castle, and, 
at sunset, found themselves on the little railway-station, waiting 
for an overdue train. The restaurant in which they sat, was a 
kind of shed, roofed by a covering of Virginia creeper; the 
station stood on an eminence; the plains stretched before them, 
as far as they could see ; the evening sky was an unbroken sheet 
of red and gold. 

The half-hour’s journey over — it was made in a narrow 
wooden compartment, crowded with peasants returning from a 
market — they left the train, and began to climb the hill. But, 
by now, Louise was at the end of her strength, and Maurice 
began to fear that he would never get her home; she could 
with difficulty drag one foot after the other, and had to rest 
every few minutes, so that it was nearly ten o’clock before they 
entered the house. In her room, he knelt before her and took 
off her boots; Amalie carried her supper up on a tray. She 
hardly touched it: her eyes were closing with fatigue, and she 
was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. 

Next day she did not waken till nearly noon, and she remained 
in bed till after dinner. For the rest of the day, she sat in the 
arm-chair. Maurice wished to read to her, but she preferred 
quiet — did not even want to be talked to. The weather was on 


MAURICE GUEST 


378 

her nerves, she said — for it had grown very sultry, and the 
sky was overcast. The landlord prophesied a thunderstorm. 
In the evening, however, as it was still dry, and he had been in 
the house all day, Maurice went out for a solitary walk'. 

He swung down the road at a pace he could only make when 
he was alone. It had looked threatening when he left the house, 
but, as he went, the clouds piled themselves up with inconceiva- 
ble rapidity, and before he was three miles out on the plain, the 
storm broke, with a sudden fury from which there was no 
escape. He took to his heels, and ran to the next village, some 
quarter of a mile in front of him. There, in the smoky room of 
a tiny inn, together with a handful of country-people, he was 
held a prisoner for over two hours; the rain pelted, and the 
thunder cracked immediately overhead. When, drenched to the 
skin, he reached the top of the hill again, it was going on for 
midnight. He had been absent for close on four hours. 

The candle in her room was guttering in its socket. By its 
failing light, he saw that she was lying across the bed, still 
dressed. Over her bent Amalie. 

He had visions of sudden illness, and brushed the girl aside. 

“ What is it? What’s the matter? ” 

At his voice, Louise lifted a wild face, stared at him as 
though she did not recognise him, then rose with a cry, and 
flung herself upon him. 

“Take care! I’m wet through.” 

For all answer, she burst out crying, and trembled from head 
to foot. 

“What is it, darling? Were you afraid? ” 

But she only clung to him and trembled. 

Amalie was weeping with equal vehemence; he ordered her 
out of the room. Notwithstanding his dripping clothes, he was 
forced to support Louise. In vain he implored her to speak; 
it was long before she was in a state to reply to his questionings. 
Outside the storm still raged ; it was a wild night. 

“What was it? Were you afraid? Did you think I was 
lost?” 

“I don’t know — Oh, Maurice! You will never leave me, 
will you ? ” 

She wounded her lips against his shoulder. 

“ Leave you ! What has put such foolish thoughts into your 
head?” 

“ I don’t know. — 'But on a night like this, I feel that any- 
thing might happen.” 


MAURICE GUEST 379 

“ And did it really matter so much whether I came back or 
not? ” 

He felt her arms tighten round him. 

“ Did you care as much as that? — Louise! ” 

“ I said: my God! — what if he should never come back! And 
then, then . . 

“ Then ?” 

“ And then the noise of the storm . . . and I was so alone 
. . . and all the long, long hours . . . and at every sound I 
said, there he is . . . and it never was you . . . till I knew you 
were lying somewhere . . . dead . . . under a tree.” 

“ You poor little soul! ” he began impulsively, then stopped, 
for he felt the sudden thrill that ran through her. 

“ Say that again, Maurice! — say it again! ” 

“You poor, little fancy-ridden soul!” 

“ Oh, if you knew how good it sounds ! — if I could make 
you understand! You’re the only person who has ever said a 
thing like that to me — the only one who has ever been in the 
least sorry for me. Promise me now — promise again — that you 
will never leave me. — 'For you are all I have.” 

“ Promise ? — again ? When you are more to me than my 
own life? ” 

“ And you will never get tired of me? — -never? ” 

“ My own dear wife ! ” 

She strained him to her with a strength for which he would 
not have given her credit. He tried to see her face. 

“ Do you know what that means? ” 

“ Yes, I know. It means, if you leave me now, I shall die.” 

By the next morning, all traces of the storm had vanished ; the 
sun shone ; the slanting roads were hard and dry again. Other 
storms followed — for it was an exceptionally hot summer — and 
many an evening the two were prisoners in her room, listening 
to the angry roar of the trees, which lashed each other with a 
sound like that of the open sea. 

Every Sunday in August, too, brought a motley crowd of 
guests to the inn, and then the whole terrace was set out with 
little tables. Two waiters came to assist Amalie; a band played 
in an arbour ; carts and wagonettes were hitched to the front of 
the house ; and the noise and merry-making lasted till late in the 
night. Together they leaned from the window of Louise’s 
room, to watch the people; they hardly ventured out of doors, 
for it was unpleasant to see their favourite nooks invaded by 


38 o 


MAURICE GUEST 


strangers. Except on Sundays, however, their seclusion re- 
mained undisturbed; half a dozen visitors were staying in the 
other wing of the building, and of these they sometimes caught 
a glimpse at meals; but that was all: the solitude they desired 
was still theirs. 

And so the happy days slid past; August was well advanced, 
by this time, and the tropical heat was at its height. In the be- 
ginning, it had been Maurice who regretted the rapid flight of 
the days: now it was Louise. Occasionally, a certain shadow 
settled on her face, and, at such moments, he well knew what 
she was thinking of: for, once, out of the very fulness of his 
content, he had said to her with a lazy sigh: “ To-day is the 
first of August,” and then, for the first time, he had seen this 
look of intense regret cross her face. She had entreated him 
not to say any more; and, after that, the speed with which the 
month decreased, was not mentioned between them. 

But his carelessly dropped words had sown their seed. A 
couple of weeks later, the remembrance of the work he had still 
to do for Schwarz, before the beginning of the new term, broke 
over him like a douche of cold water. It was a resplendent 
morning; he had been leaning out of the window, idly tapping 
his fingers on the sill. Suddenly they seemed to him to have 
grown stiff, to have lost their agility ; and by the thoughts that 
now came, he was so disquieted that he shut himself up in his 
own room. 

At his first words to her, Louise, who was still in bed, turned 
pale. “Yes, yes, be quiet! — I know,” she said, and buried her 
face in the down pillow. 

In this position she remained for some seconds ; Maurice stood 
staring out of the window. Then, without raising her face, she 
held out her hand to him. 

He took it; but he did not do what she expected he would: 
sit down on the side of the bed, and put his arm round her. He 
stood holding it, absent-mindedly. She stole a glance at him, 
and turned still paler. Then, with a jerk, she released her hand, 
sat up in bed, and pushed her hair from her face. 

“Maurice! . . . then if it has to be . . . then to-day . . . 
please, please, to-day ! Don’t ask me to stay here, and think, and 
remember, that it’s all over — that this is the end — that we shall 
never, never be here in this little room again ! Oh, I couldn’t 
bear it! — I can’t bear it, Maurice! Let us go away — please, let 
us go ! ” 

In vain he urged reason; there was no gainsaying her: she 


MAURICE GUEST 


381 

brushed aside, without listening to it, his objection that their 
rooms in Leipzig would not be ready for them. Throwing back 
the bedclothes, she got up at once and dressed herself, with cold 
fingers, then flung herself upon the packing, helped and hin- 
dered by Amalie, who wept beside her. The hour that fol- 
lowed was like a bad dream. Finally, however, the luggage 
was carried downstairs, the bill paid, and the circumstantial 
good-byes were said : they set off, at full speed, down the wood- 
path to the station, to catch the midday train. Louise was 
white with exhaustion: her breath came sobbingly. In a first- 
class carriage, he made her lie down on the seat. With her hand 
in his, he said what he could to comfort her; for her face was 
tragic. 

“ We will come again, darling. It is only auf Wiedersehen , 
remember ! ” 

But she shook her head. 

“ We shall never be here again.” 

Leipzig, at three o’clock on an August afternoon, lay baking 
in the sun. He put her in a covered droschke, himself carrying 
the bags, for he could not find a porter. 

“ At seven, then! Try to sleep. You are so pale.” 

“ Good-bye — good-bye ! ” 

His hand rested on the door of the droschke. She laid hers 
on it, and clung to it as though she would never let it go. 


t ' 







PART III 


dove il Sol tace. 


— Dante. 







I 


F RAU KRAUSE was ill pleased at his unlooked-for 
reappearance, and did not scruple to say so. From 
the condition of disorder in which he found his room, 
Maurice judged that it had been occupied, during his 
absence, by the entire family. Having been caught napping, 
Frau Krause carried the matter off with a high hand: she gave 
him to understand that his behaviour in descending upon her 
thus, was not that of a decent lodger. Maurice never parleyed 
with her; ascertaining by a glance that his books and music had 
been left untouched, he made his escape from the pails of water 
that were straightway brought into evidence, as well as from her 
irate assurances that the room would be ready for him in a 
quarter of an hour. 

He went into the town, and did various small errands neces- 
sary to the taking up anew of the old life. After he had had 
dinner, and had looked through the newspapers, the temptation 
was strong to go to Louise, and spend the hot afternoon hours 
at her side. But he resisted; for that would have been a poor 
beginning to the sensible way of life they would have to fol- 
low, from now on. Besides, with the certainty of seeing her 
again in a very short time, it was not impossible to be patient. 
No more uncertainty, no more doubts and fears! — the day for 
these was over. — And so, having satisfied himself that his room 
was still uninhabitable, he strolled to the Conservatorium, to 
see what notices had remained affixed to the notice-board. As 
he was leaving again, he met the janitor, and from him learned 
that his name was down for the first Abendunterhaltung of the 
coming month. 

In the shadeless street, he paused irresolute. The heat of 
the slumbrous afternoon was oppressive; all animation seemed 
suspended. The trees in streets and gardens drooped, brownish- 
yellow, and heavy with dust. The sun met the eyes blindingly, 
and was reflected from every house-wall. Maurice went for 
a walk in the woods. In his pocket he had a letter, still un- 
read, which he had found waiting for him that day. It was 

385 


MAURICE GUEST 


386 

from his mother, and his eyes slid carelessly over the pages. 
There were the usual reproaches for his prolonged silences, the 
never-failing reminders that his time in Leipzig would come to 
an end the following spring, as well as several details of do- 
mestic interest. Then, however, followed a piece of news, 
which rallied his attention. 

You will doubtless be interested to hear , she wrote, that 
your friend the old music teacher in Norwich died suddenly 
last week. His pupils had fallen off greatly of late and when 
everything had been sold there was scarcely enough to cover 
the funeral expenses. Your father thinks that though a young 
person from London of the name of Smith or Smythe has lately 
set up there and attracted many of the best paying families 
yet the old connection might be worked up again and it would 
be worth your while trying to do it. At first you could live 
at home and go over once or twice a week. Your father has 
been making inquiries about a suitable room . 

This news called up a feeling of repugnance in Maurice: 
it came like a message from another world; the very baldness 
of its expression seemed to throw him back, at one stroke, into 
the hated atmosphere of his home. He folded the letter and 
replaced it in the envelope, with such a conscious hostility to 
all that his blood-relations did or said, as he had not felt since 
the day when, in their midst, he had struggled to assert his 
independence. How little they understood him! It was like 
them, in their unimaginative dulness, to suppose that they could 
arrange his life for him — draw up the lines on which it was to 
be spent. He saw himself bound down hand and foot again, 
to the occupation he so hated; saw himself striving to oust 
the young person from London, just as no doubt his old friend 
had striven; saw himself becoming proficient in all the mean, 
petty tricks of rival teachers, and either vanquishing or being 
vanquished, in the effort to earn a living. 

However he viewed them, his prospects had nothing hopeful 
in them. They were vague, too, to the last degree. On one 
question alone was his mind made up: he meant to marry 
Louise at the earliest possible date. Whatever else happened, 
this should come to pass. For the first time, he thought with 
something akin to remorse, over the turn affairs had taken. 
He had been blind and dizzy with his infatuation, sick for 
her to his very marrow — he could only look back on those 


MAURICE GUEST 387 

feverish weeks In June as on the horrors of a nightmare — and 
he would not have missed a single hour of the happy days at 
Rochlitz. But, none the less, he had always felt a peculiar 
aversion to people who allowed their feelings to get the better 
of them. Now, he himself was one of them. If only she were 
his wife! Had she consented, he would have married her 
there and then, without reflection. They might have lived 
on, just as they were going to do, and have kept their mar- 
riage a secret, reserving to themselves the pleasure of know- 
ing that their intimacy was legal. At it was, he must con- 
sole himself with the thought that, married or not, they were 
indissolubly bound : he knew now better than before, that 
no other woman would ever exist for him; and surely, in 
the case of an all-absorbing passion such as this, the over- 
stepping of conventional boundaries would not be counted too 
heavily against them: laws and conventions existed only for 
the weak and vacillating loves of the rest of the world. 

Then, however, and almost against his will, the other side 
of the question forced itself upon his notice. As the marriage 
had not already taken place, as, indeed, Louise chose to evade 
the subject when he brought it up, he could not but admit to 
himself, rather wrily, that it would be pleasanter for him if 
it were now postponed until he was independent of home-sup- 
port. His family would, he knew, bitterly resent his taking 
the step; and in regard to them, he was proud. Where Louise 
was concerned, of course, it was a different matter: there, no 
misplaced pride should stand in the way. She had ample 
means for her own needs; it was merely a question of earning 
enough to keep himself. The sole advantage of the present 
state of affairs was, that it might still be concealed; whereas 
even a secret marriage implied a possible publicity; it might 
somehow leak out, and, in the event of this, he knew that his 
parents would immediately cut off supplies. If once he were 
independent of them, he could do as he liked. He set his teeth 
at the thought of it. To no small extent, his way was mapped 
out for him. Marrying Louise meant giving up all idea of 
returning home. He understood now, more clearly than be- 
fore, how unfitted she was for the narrow life that would there 
be expected of her. And even if he had longed for approval 
and consent, he would never have had courage to ask her to 
face the petty, ignoble details of conventional propriety, which 
such a sanction implied. No, if he wished to ensure her hap- 
piness, he must secure to her the freer atmosphere in which she 


MAURICE GUEST 


388 

was accustomed to live. He must burn his ships behind him, 
and the most satisfactory thing was, that he was able to do it 
without a pang. 

He racked his brains as to the means of making a livelihood. 
There was nothing he would not do. He was more ready to 
work than ever a labourer with a starving family at his back. 
But, having let every possibility pass before his mind’s eye, 
he was forced to the conclusion that the only occupation open 
to him was the one he had come to Leipzig to escape. He 
was fit for nothing but to be a teacher. All he could do at 
the piano, hundreds of others could do better; his talents as 
a conductor were, he had learned, of the meagrest ; the pleasing 
little songs he might compose, of small value. Yet, if this 
were the price he had to pay for making her his wife, he -was 
content to pay it: no sacrifice was too great for him. And 
then, to be a teacher here meant something different from what 
it meant in England. Here, it was possible to retain your self- 
respect — the caste of the class was another to begin with — and 
also to remain in touch with all that was best worth knowing. 
As a foreigner, he might add to his earnings by teaching English ; 
but piano-lessons would of necessity be his chief source of in- 
come. They were plentiful enough: Avery Hill supported 
herself entirely by them, and Fiirst kept his family. Of course, 
though, this was due to Schwarz: his influence was a key to 
all doors. Both of these were favourite pupils; while a melan- 
choly fact, which had to be faced, was, that he did not stand 
well with Schwarz. Somehow, they had never taken to each 
other: he, perhaps, had had too open an eye for the master’s 
foibles, and Schwarz had no doubt been aware, from the first, 
of his pupil’s fatally divided interests. The crown had probably 
been set by his ill-considered flight in July. If he wished ulti- 
mately to achieve something, the interest he had forfeited must 
be regained, cost what it might. He would work, in these com- 
ing months, as never before. Could he make a brilliant, even a 
wholly respectable job of the trio he was to play, it would go far 
towards reinstating him in Schwarz’s good graces : and he might 
then venture to approach the master with a request for assistance. 
This was the first piece of work that lay to his hand, and he 
would do it with all his might. After that, the rest. 

There was no time to lose. A mild despair overcame him 
at the thought of the intricate sonata, the long, mazy con- 
certo by Hummel, which had formed his holiday task. In 
exactly a fortnight from this date, the vacation came to an 


MAURICE GUEST 


389 

end, and, as yet, he did not know a note of them. Through 
the motionless heat of the paved streets, he went home, and 
turning Frau Krause out of his room, sat down at the piano 
to scales and exercises. Not until he felt suppleness and 
strength coming back to his fingers, did he allow his thoughts 
to wander. Then, however, they leapt to Louise; after this 
break in his consciousness, he seemed to have been absent from 
her for days. 

The sun was full on her windows; curtains and blinds were 
drawn against it. While he hesitated/ still dazzled by the glare 
of the streets, she sprang to meet him, laying both hands on 
his shoulders. 

“At last!” 

He blinked, and laughed, and held her at arm’s length. 
“ At last ? — Why, what does that mean ? ” 

“ That I have been waiting for you, and hoping you would 
come — for hours.” 

“ But, dearest, I’m too early as it is. It’s not six o’clock.” 

“ Yes, I know. But I was so sure you would come sooner, 
— that you wouldn’t be able to stay away! Oh, the afternoon 
has been endless; and the heat was suffocating. I couldn’t 
dress, and I haven’t unpacked a thing.” 

Now he saw that she was in her dressing-gown, and that 
the bags and valises stood in a corner, just as they had been 
carried up from the droschke. 

With her hands still on his shoulders, she put back her head. 
A thin line of white appeared between her lips, and, under 
their drooped lids, her eyes shone with a moist brilliance. 
She looked at him eagerly for some seconds, and it seemed to 
him wistfully, too. Then, in an inexplicable change of mood, 
she let her arms ‘fall, and turned away. She had grown pale 
and despondent. There was only one thing for him to do: to 
put his arms round her and draw her to his knee. Holding her 
thus, he whispered in her ear words such as she loved to hear. 
He had grown skilled in repeating them. Under the even mur- 
mur of his voice, her face grew tranquil; she sank little 
by little into a state of well-being; her one fear was that he 
would cease speaking. His grasp of her grew tighter. 

On the writing-table, a gold-faced clock ticked solemnly: 
its minutes went by unheeded. Maurice was the first to feel 
the disillusioning shudder of reality; simultaneously, the re- 
membrance returned to him of what he had come intending 
to tell her. — He loosened her arms. 


390 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Louise! ” he said in an altered voice. “ Look up, dear! — 
and let me see your eyes. You won’t believe me, I think, but 
I came this evening meaning to talk very sensibly — nothing but 
common sense, in fact. There’s a great deal I want to say to 
you. Come, let us be two rational people — yes? As a be- 
ginning, I’ll draw up the blinds. The sun’s behind the houses 
now, and the room is so close.” 

Louise shrank from the violent, dusty light; and her face, 
a moment back rapturously content, took on at once a look of 
apprehension. 

“ Not to-night, Maurice — not to-night ! It’s too . . . too hot 
for common sense to-night.” 

He laughed and took her hand. “ Be my own brave girl, 
and help me. You have only to look at me, as you know, to 
make me forget everything. And that mustn’t be. We have 
got to be serious for a little — have you ever thought, Louise, 
how seldom you and I have talked seriously together? There 
was never time, was there? ... in all these weeks. There 
was only time to tell you how much you are to me. — But now — 
well, so many things were running in my head this afternoon. 
This letter from home was the beginning of them. Read it — 
this page here, at least — and then I’ll tell you what I’ve been 
thinking.” 

He put the letter into her hand, and she ran her eyes over 
the page. But she laid it down without comment. 

A fear crossed his mind. “ Don’t misunderstand it,” he said 
hastily. “ You know that point was settled months ago. There’s 
no question of going back for me now — and I’m glad of it. 
I never want to see England again. But it gave me a lot to 
think about — how the staying here was to be managed, and 
things like that.” 

He was conscious of becoming somewhat wordy; and as she 
did not respond, his uneasiness grew. In his anxiety to make 
her think as he did, he clasped his hand over hers. 

“ I needn’t say again, need I, darling, what the past weeks 
have meant to me? I’m so grateful to you for them that I 
could only prove it with years of my life. But — and don’t 
misunderstand this either, or think I don’t love you more now 
than ever before — you know I do. But, look at it as we will, 
those weeks were play — glorious play, worth half one’s ex- 
istence, but still only play. They couldn’t last for ever. Now 
we’ve come back, and we have to face work and the workaday 
world — you see what I mean, I’m sure?” 


MAURICE GUEST 


39i 


There was a note of entreaty in his voice. As she still kept 
silence, he gave his whole strength to demolishing the mute 
opposition he felt in her. 

“From now on, dear, we must make up our minds to be 
two very sensible people. IVe an enormous amount of work to 
get through, in the coming months. And at Easter, I shall 
probably be thrown on my own resources. But I’ll fight my 
way somehow — here, beside you. We’ll live our own life. 
Just you and I. — Let me tell you what I propose to do,” — 
and here, he laid before her, in their entirety, his plans for win- 
ning over Schwarz, for gaining a foothold, and for making a 
modest income. “ A good Prufung ” he concluded, “ and I’ll 
be able to get anything I want out of him. In the meantime, 
I’ve got to make a decent job next month of the trio — I’m 
pretty well in his black books, I can guess, for going off as I 
did in July. I must work as I’ve never done before. Each 
single day must be mapped out, and nothing allowed to inter- 
fere. It’s an undertaking; but you’ll help me, won’t you, dar- 
ling? — as only you can. I’ve let things go, far too much — I 
see it now. But it was impossible — frankly, I didn’t care. I 
only wanted you. Now, it will ... it must be different. 
The unrest is gone; you belong to me, and I to you. We are 
sure of each other.” 

“Oh, it’s stifling! There’s no air in the room.” 

She rose from his side, and went to the open window, where 
she stood with her back to him. As a result of his words, her 
life seemed suddenly to stretch before her, just as dry, and 
dusty, and commonplace, as the street she looked down on. 

“ I want to show you, too,” he continued behind her, “ that 
you haven’t utterly thrown yourself away. I know how little 
I can do; but honest endeavour must count for something. I 
ask nothing better than to work for you, Louise — and you 
know it.” 

A wave of warm air came in at the window; the dying 
afternoon turned to twilight. 

“ Yes . . . and I? What am I to do? What room is there 
for me in your plans of work ? ” 

He glanced sharply at her; but she had not moved. 

“ Louise, dearest ! I know that what I say must sound 
selfish and inconsiderate. And yet I can’t help it. I’m forced 
to ask you to wait . . . merely to wait. And for what? 
Good Heavens, no one realises it as I do! I have nothing to 
offer you, in return — but my love for you. But if you knew 


392 


MAURICE GUEST 


how strong that is — if you knew how happy I am resolved to 
make you! Have a little patience, darling! It will all come 
right in the end — if only you love me ! And you do, don’t you ? 
Say once more you do.” 

She turned so swiftly that the tail of her dressing-gown 
twisted, and fell over on itself. 

“ Can you still ask that? Have you not had proof enough? 
Is there an inch of you that doesn’t believe in my love for 
you? Oh, Maurice! . . . It’s only that I’m tired to-night — 
and restless. I was so wretched at having to come back. 
And the heat has got on my nerves. I wish a great storm 
would come, and shake the house, and make the branches of 
the trees beat against the panes — do you remember? And we 
were so safe. The worse the storm was, the closer you held 
me.” She sat down beside him, on the arm of the sofa. “ Such 
a night seemed doubly wild after the long, still days that had 
gone before it — do you remember? — Oh, why had it all to end? 
Weren’t we happy enough? Or did we ask too much? Why 
must time go just the same over happiness and unhappiness 
alike? ” She got up again, and strayed back to the window. 
“ Days like those will never — can never — come again. Even 
as it is, coming back has made a difference. Could you even 
yesterday have spoken as you do to-day? Was there any room 
then for common sense between us? No, we were too happy. 
It was enough to know we were alive.” 

“ Be reasonable, darling. I am as sorry as you that these 
weeks are over ; but, glorious as they were, they couldn’t last for 
ever. And trust me; we shall know other days just as happy. 
— But if, because I talk like this, you imagine I don’t love you 
a hundred times better even than yesterday — but you don’t 
mean that! You know me better, my Rachel! ” 

“ Yes. Perhaps you’re right — you are right. But I am 
right, too.” 

She came back, and sat down on the sofa again, and propped 
her chin on her hand. 

“You’re tired to-night, dear — that’s all. To-morrow things 
will look different, and you’ll see the truth of what I say. At 
night, things get distorted ” 

“ No. no, one only really sees in the dark,” she interrupted 
him. 

— “but in the morning, one can smile at one’s fears. Trust 
me, Louise, and believe in me. All our future happiness 
depends on how we act just now.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


393 


“ Our future happiness . . . yes,” she said slowly. “ But 
what of the present ? ” 

“ Isn’t it worth while sacrificing a brief present to a long 
future?” 

She threw him a quick glance. “You talk like an orthodox 
Christian, Maurice,” she said, and added: “The present is 
here: it belongs to us. The future is so unclear — who knows 
what it will bring us ! ” 

“ And isn’t it just for that very reason that I speak as I do? 
If everything lay clear and straight before us, do you think 
I should bother about anything but you? It’s the uncertainty 
of the whole thing that troubles me. But however vague it 
is, I can tell you one thing that will happen. And you know, 
dearest, what that is — the only ambition I have left: to make 
you my wife at the earliest possible moment.” 

She gazed at him meditatively. 

“ Why wouldn’t you let me have my way at first? ” he 
cried. “Why were you against it? We could have kept it a 
secret: no one need have known a thing about it. And I 
should never have asked you to go to England, or to see my 
people. Call it narrow, if you must, I can’t help it; it’s the 
only thing for us to do. Why won’t you agree ? Tell me what 
you have against it. Listen ! ” He knelt down and put his 
arms round her. “ We have still a fortnight — that’s time 
enough. Let us go to England to-morrow, and be married — 
without a word to anyone — in the first registrar’s office we 
find. Only marry me ! ” 

“Would it make you love me more?” 

She looked at him intently, turning the whole weight of 
her dark glance upon him. 

“You!” he said. “You to ask such a thing! You with 
these eyes . . . and this hair! And these hands! — I love every 
line of them . . . You can’t understand, can you, you bundle 
of emotions, that I should care for you as I do, and yet be able 
to talk soberly? It seems to you a man’s way of loving — and 
poor at that. But if you imagine I don’t love you all the more 
for what you have sacrificed for me — no, you didn’t say that, I 
know, but it comes to the same thing in the end.” 

She made no answer; and a feeling of discouragement began 
to creep over him. He rose to his feet. 

“ A man who loves a woman as I love you,” he said almost 
violently, “ has only one wish — can have only one. I shall 
never rest or be thoroughly happy till you consent to marry 


394 


MAURICE GUEST 


me. That you can refuse as you do, seems to prove that you 
don’t care for me enough.” 

She put her arms round his neck: her wide sleeves fell back, 
leaving her arms bare. “ Maurice,” she said gently, “ why 
must you worry yourself? — You know if you are set on our 
marrying, I’ll give way. But I don’t want to be married — 
not yet. There’s plenty of time. It’s only a small matter now ; 
it doesn’t seem as if it could make any difference; and yet it 
might. The sense of being bound; of some one — no, of the 
law permitting us to love each other . . . no, Maurice, 

not yet. — Listen! I’m older and wiser than you, and I know. 
Happiness like this doesn’t come every day. Instead of 
brooding and hesitating, one must seize it while it’s there: 
it’s such a slippery thing; it’s gone before you know it. You 
can’t bind it fast, and say it shall last so and so long. We have 
it now; don’t let us talk and reason about it. — Oh, to-day, I’m 
nervous! Let me make a confession. As a child I had pre- 
sentiments — things I foresaw came true, and on the morning 
of a misfortune, I’ve felt such a load on my chest that I could 
hardly breathe. Well, to-day, when I came into this room 
again, it seemed as if two black wings shut out the sunlight; 
and I was afraid. The past weeks have been so unreasonably 
happy — such happiness mustn’t be let go. Help me to hold it ; 
I can’t do it alone. Don’t try to make it fast to the future; 
while you do that, it’s going — do you think one can draw out 
happiness like a thread? Oh, help me! — don’t let anything 
take it from us. And I will give up everything to it. Only 
you must always be beside me, Maurice, and love me. Don’t 
let anything come between us! For my sake, for my sake!” 

In the face of this outpouring, his own opinions seemed of 
little matter; his one concern was to ward off the tears that 
he saw were imminent. He held her to him, stroked her hair, 
and murmured words of comfort. But when she raised her 
head again, her eyelids were reddened, as though she had 
actually wept. 

“ Now I know you. Now you are my own again,” she 
whispered. “ How could I know you as you were then? I’d 
never seen you like that — seen you cold and sensible.” 

He looked down at her without speaking, in a preoccupied 
way. 

She touched his face with her finger. “ Here are lines I 
don’t know — I see them now for the first time — lines of rea- 
son, of common sense, of all that is strange to me in you.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


395 


He caught her hand, continuing to gaze at her with the 
same expression of aloofness. “ I need them for us both. You 
have none.” 

Her lips parted in a smile. Then this faded, and she looked 
at him with eyes that reminded him of an untamed animal, or 
of a startled child. 

“ Mine . . . still mine! ” she said passionately. — And in the 
hours it took to reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions 
were blown like chaff before the wind. 


II 


The next fortnight flew by; and familiar faces began to ap- 
pear again. The steps and inner vestibule of the Conserva- 
torium became a lounge for seeing acquaintances. In the cafe 
at the corner, the click of billiard balls was to be heard from 
early morning on. 

Maurice looked forward to meeting his friends, with some 
embarrassment. It was unlikely that the events of the summer 
had remained a secret; for that, there was a clique in the place 
over-much on the alert for scandal, to which unfortunately the 
name of Louise Dufrayer lent itself only too readily. He 
could not decide what position to take up, with regard to their 
present intimacy; to flaunt it openly, to be pointed at as her 
lover, would for her sake be repugnant to him. It made him 
reject an idea he had revolved, of begging her to let him an- 
nounce their engagement: for, in the present state of things, 
the word “ Brautigam ** had an evil sound. Eventually, he came 
to the conclusion that they must be more cautious than they had 
ever been, and give absolutely no food for talk. 

One day, in the Grassistrasse , he came upon a little knot 
of men he knew. And it was just as he supposed; the secret 
was a secret no longer. He saw it at once in their treatment 
of him. There was a spice of deference in their manner: and 
their looks expressed curiosity, envious surprise, even a kind of 
brotherly welcome. After this, Maurice changed his mind: 
the only course open to him was to brazen things out. He 
would not wait for his friends to show him what they thought; 
he would be beforehand with them. 

A chance soon offered of putting his intentions into prac- 
tice. On entering Seyffert’s one afternoon, he espied Dove, 
who had just returned. Dove sat alone at a small table, read- 
ing the Tageblatt; before him stood a cup of cocoa. When 
he saw Maurice, he raised the newspaper a trifle higher, so that 
it covered the level of his eyes. But Maurice went across the 
room, and touched him on the shoulder. Dove dropped his 
shield, and sprang up, exclaiming with surprise. Maurice sat 
down beside him, and, by dint of a little wheedling, put 
Dove at his ease. The latter was bubbling over with new ex- 
periences and future prospects. It seemed that in Peterbor- 

396 


MAURICE GUEST 


397 

ough, Dove’s native town, the art of music was taking strides 
that were nothing short of marvellous. To hear Dove talk, the 
palm for progress must be awarded to Peterborough, over and 
above all the other towns of Great Britain; and he was agog 
with plans and expectations. During the holidays, he had 
held conversations with several local magnates, all of whom 
expressed themselves in favour of his scheme for founding a 
school of music, and promised him their support. Dove had 
returned to Leipzig in a bran-new outfit, and a hard hat; his 
studies were coming to an end in spring, and he began to think 
already of casting the skin of Bohemianism. 

Maurice listened to him leniently — even drew Dove out a 
little. But he kept his eye on the clock. In less than half an 
hour, he would be with Louise; from some corner of the semi- 
darkened room, she would spring towards him, and throw her- 
self into his arms. 

The majority of the classes were not yet assembled, when 
one day, a rumour rose, and spreading, ran from mouth to 
mouth. Those who heard it were at first incredulous; as, 
however, it continued to make headway, they whistled to them- 
selves, or vented their surprise in a breathless “ A ch!” Later 
in the day, they stood about in groups, and excitedly dis- 
cussed the subject. Ten of Schwarz’s most advanced pupils 
had left the master for the outsider named Schrievers. At the 
head of the list stood Fiirst. 

The Conservatorium, royally endowed and municipally con- 
trolled, held to its time-honoured customs with tenacity. The 
older masters laboured to uphold tradition, and such younger 
ones as were progressively inclined, had not the influence to 
effect a change. Unattached teachers were regarded with sus- 
picion — unless they happened to be former pupils of the insti- 
tution, in which case it was assumed that they carried out its 
precepts. There had naturally always been plenty of others as 
well; but these were comparatively powerless: they could give 
their pupils neither imposing certificates, nor gala public perform- 
ances, such as the Prufungen, and, for the most part, they 
flourished unknown. This was previous to the arrival of 
Schrievers. It was now about a year and a half ago that his 
settling in Leipzig had caused a flutter in musical circles. 
Then, however, he had been forgotten, or at least remembered 
only at intervals, when it was heard that he had caught an- 
other fish, in the shape of a renegade pupil. 


MAURICE GUEST 


398 

Schrievers was a burly, red-bearded man, still well under 
middle age, and possessed of plenty of push and self-confidence. 
It soon transpired that he was an out-and-out champion of 
modern ideas in music; for, from the first, he was connected 
with a leading paper, in which he made his views known. He 
had a trenchant pen, and, with unfailing consistency, criticised 
the musical conditions of Leipzig adversely. The progressive 
Lisztverein f of which he was soon the leading spirit, alone 
escaped; the opera, bereft of Nikisch, and the Gewandhaus, 
under its gentle and aged conductor, were treated by him with 
biting sarcasm. But his chief butt was the Conservatorium, 
and its ancient methods. He asserted that not a jot of the 
curriculum had been altered for fifty years; and its speedy 
downfall was the sole result to be expected and hoped for. 
The fact that, at this time, some seven hundred odd students 
were enrolled on its books went far to discredit this pious hope ; 
but, nevertheless, Schrievers harped always on the same string; 
and just as perpetual dropping wears a stone, so his continued 
diatribes ate into emotional and sensitive natures. He began 
to attract a following, and, simultaneously, to make himself 
known as a pupil of Liszt. This brought him a fresh batch 
of enemies. Even a small German town is seldom without 
its Liszt-pupil, and in Leipzig several were settled, none of 
whom had ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused 
to admit him to their jealous clique. In their opinion, he be- 
longed to that goodly class of persons, who, having by hook 
or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in the Abbe of Wei- 
mar’s presence, afterwards abused the sacred name of pupil. 
He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour than by 
the conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the 
ruin of art in all he did. 

Various reasons were given for his success, no one being 
willing to believe that it was due to his merits as a teacher. 
Some said that he recognised in a twinkling the weak points 
of the individual with whom he had to deal. He humoured 
foibles, was tender of self-conceit. He also flattered his. pupils 
by giving them music that was beyond their powers of execution : 
those, for instance, who had worked long and with feeble interest 
at Czerny, Dussek and Hummel, were dazzled at the prospect 
of Liszt and Chopin, which was suddenly thrust beneath their 
eyes. Other ill-wishers believed that his chief bait was the 
musical soirees he gave when a famous pianist came to the 
town. By virtue of his journalistic position, he was personally 


MAURICE GUEST 


399 


acquainted with all the great; they visited at his house, and 
his pupils had thus not merely the opportunity of getting to know 
artists like Rubinstein and d’Albert, and of hearing them play 
in private, but, what was more to the point, of themselves 
taking part in the performance, and perhaps receiving a golden 
word from the great man’s lips. And though no huge parch- 
ment scroll was forthcoming on the termination of one’s 
studies, yet Schrievers held the weapon of criticism in his 
hand, and, at the first tentative public appearance of the young 
performer, could make or mar as he chose. He lived on good 
terms, too, with his fellow-critics, so that wire-pulling was 
easy — incomparably more so than were the embarrassing visits, 
open to any snub, which were common if one was only a pupil 
of the Conservatorium, and which, in the case of the lady- 
pupils, included costly bouquets of flowers. 

Among those who had deserted Schwarz were some, like 
Miss Martin, malcontents, who had flitted from place to place, 
and from master to master, in the perpetual hope of discover- 
ing that ideal teacher who would estimate them at their true 
worth. These were radiantly satisfied with the change. Miss 
Martin bore, wherever she went, an octave-study by Liszt, 
and flaunted it in the faces of her friends: and Miss Moses, 
who had been under Bendel, could not say two sentences with- 
out throwing in: “That Chopin etude I studied last,” or: 
“ The Polonaise in E flat I’m working at ; ” for, beforehand, 
she too had been a humble performer of Haydn and Bertini. 
James had the prospect of playing a Concerto by Liszt — for- 
bidden fruit to the pupils of the Conservatorium — in one of 
the concerts of the Lisztverein, and was sure, in advance, of 
being favourably criticised. Boehmer wished to specialise in 
Bach, and if Schwarz set himself against one thing more than 
another, it was a one-sided musical taste: within the bounds 
of classicism, the master demanded catholic sympathies; those 
students who had romantic leanings towards Chopin and Schu- 
mann, were castigated with severely classical compositions; 
and, vice versa, he had insisted on Boehmer widening his hori- 
zon on Schubert and Mendelssohn. And there were also sev- 
eral others, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, 
from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their ac- 
quired skill to Schrievers’ credit. Furst was the greatest riddle 
of all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have 
extended the fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show 
pupil of the institution, and, in the coming Prufungen, was to 


400 


MAURICE GUEST 


have distinguished himself, and his master with him, by playing 
Beethoven’s Concerto in E flat. 

Other teachers besides Schwarz had been forsaken for the 
new-comer, but in no case by so large a body of students. 
They bore their losses philosophically. Bendel, one of the few 
masters who spoke English — it was against the principles of 
Schwarz to know a word of it: foreign pupils had to learn 
his language, not he theirs — Bendel, frequented chiefly by the 
American colony, was of a phlegmatic temperament and not 
easily roused. He alluded to the backsliders with an ironical 
jest, preferring to believe that they were the losers. But 
Schwarz was of a diametrically opposite nature. In the short, 
thickset man, with the all-seeing eyes, and the head of care- 
fully waved hair, just streaked with grey — a head at once too 
massive and too fine for the clumsy body — in Schwarz, dwelt 
a fierce and indomitable pride. His was one of those moody, 
sensitive natures, quick to resent, always on the look-out for 
offence. He was ever ready to translate things into the per- 
sonal; for though he had an overweening sense of his own 
importance, there was yet room in him for a secret doubt; and 
with this doubt, he, as it were, put other people to the test. The 
loss of the flower of his flock made him doubly unsure; he felt 
himself a marked man, for Bendel and other enemies to jeer 
at. Aloud, he spoke long and vehemently, as if mere noisy 
words would heal the wound. And the pupils who had re- 
mained faithful to him, gathered all the more closely round 
him, and burned as he did. If wishes could have injured or 
killed, Fiirst’s career would then and there have come to an 
end: his ingratitude, his treachery, and his lack of moral fibre, 
were denounced on every hand. 

One day, at this time, Maurice entered Schwarz’s room. 
The class was assembled; but, although the hour was well 
advanced, no one had begun to play. The master stood at the 
window, with his back to the grass-grown courtyard. He was 
haranguing, in a strident voice, the three pupils who sat along 
the wall. From what followed, Maurice gathered that that 
very afternoon Schwarz had been informed of the loss of four 
more pupils; and though, as every one knew, he had hitherto 
not set much store by any of them, he now discovered latent 
talent in all four, and was, at the same time, exasperated that 
such nonentities should presume to judge him. 

To infer from the appearance of those present, the storm 
had raged for a considerable period. And still it went on. After 


MAURICE GUEST 


401 

the expiry of a further interval, Krafft who, throughout, had 
sat shading his eyes with his hand, awoke as though from sleep, 
yawned heartily, stretched himself and, taking out his watch, 
studied it with profound attention. For the first time, Schwarz 
was checked in his flow of words; he coughed, fumbled for 
an epithet^ then stopped, and, to the general surprise, motioned 
Krafft to the piano. 

But Heinrich was in a bad mood. He stifled another yawn 
before beginning, and played in a mechanical way. 

Schwarz had often enough made allowance for this pupil’s 
varying moods; he was not now in the humour to do so. 

" Halt ! ” he cried before the first page was turned. “ What 
in God’s name is the meaning of this? Do you come here to 
read from sight ? ” 

Krafft continued to play as if nothing had been said. 

“ Do you hear me ? ” thundered Schwarz. 

“ It’s impossible,” said Krafft, and proceeded. 

“ Barmherziger Gott! ” The master’s short neck red- 

dened, and twisted in its collar. 

“ Give me music I care to play, and I’ll show you how it 
should be done. I can make nothing of this,” answered Krafft. 

Schwarz strode up to the piano, and swept the volume from 
the rack ; it fell with a crash on the keys and on Krafft’s hands, 
and effectually hindered him from continuing. 

What had gone before was as a summer shower to a deluge. 
With his arms stiffly knotted behind his back, Schwarz paced 
the floor with a tread that shook it. His steely blue eyes 
flashed with passion; the veins stood out on his forehead; his 
large, prominent mouth gaped above his tuft of beard; he 
struck ludicrous attitudes, pouring out, meanwhile, without 
stint — for he had soon passed from Krafft’s particular case of 
insubordination to the general one — pouring out the savage 
anger and deep-felt injury that had accumulated in him. 
Finally, he invited the class to rise and leave him, there and 
then. For what, in God’s name, were they waiting? Let them 
up and away, without more ado! 

On receiving the volume of Beethoven on his fingers, Krafft 
straightened out the pages, and taking down his hat from its 
peg, left the room, with movements of a calculated coolness. 
But only a pupil of Bulow’s might take such a liberty; the rest 
had to assist quietly at the painful scene. Maurice studied his 
finger nails, and Dove did not once remove his eyes from the 
leg of the piano. They, at least, knew from experience that, 


402 


MAURICE GUEST 


in time, the storm would pass; also that it sounded worse than 
it actually was. But a new-comer, a stout Bavarian lad, with 
hair cut like Rubinstein’s, who was present at the lesson for 
the first time, was pale and frightened, and sat drinking in 
every word. 

Towards the end of the hour, when quiet was re-established, 
one’s inclination was rather to escape from the room and be 
free, than to sit down to play something that demanded cool- 
ness and concentration. Dove, who was not sensitive to ex- 
ternals, came safely through the ordeal; but Maurice made a 
poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel. Schwarz 
did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, the 
new-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but 
he was still so flustered that, at a critical moment, he brought 
the music down on the keys. Schwarz said nothing; wrapped 
in the moody silence that invariably followed his outbursts, he 
hardly seemed aware that anyone was playing. After two 
movements of the trio, he signed to Beyerlein to take his turn, 
and proffered no comment on Maurice’s work. Maurice would 
have hurried away, without a further word, had he not already 
learned the early date of his performance. He knew, too, that 
if the practical side of the affair — rehearsals with string play- 
ers, and so on — was not satisfactorily arranged, he would be 
blamed for it. So he reminded Schwarz of the matter. From 
what ensued, it was plain that the master still bore him a 
grudge for absconding in summer. Schwarz glared coldly at 
him, as if unsure to what Maurice alluded; and when the 
latter had recalled the details of the case to his mind, he said 
rudely: “You went your way, Herr Guest. Now I go 
mine.” He commenced to turn the leaves of his ponderous 
note-book, and after Maurice had stood for some few minutes, 
listening to Beyerlein trip and stumble through Mozart, he 
felt that, for this day at least, he could put up with no more, 
and left the class. 


Ill 


Shaking all disagreeable impressions from him, he sped through 
the fading light of the September afternoon. 

This was the time — it was six o’clock — at which he could 
rejoin Louise with a free mind. It was the exception for him 
to go earlier, or at other hours; but, did he chance to go, no 
matter when, she met him in the same way — sprang towards 
him from the window, where she had been sitting or standing, 
with her eyes on the street. 

“ I believe you watch for me all day long,” he said to her 
once. 

On this particular afternoon, when he had used much the 
same words to her, she put back her head and looked up at him, 
with a pale, unsmiling face. 

“ Not quite,” she answered slowly. “ But I have a fancy, 
Maurice — a foolish fancy — that once you will come early — 
in the morning — and we shall have the whole day together 
again. Perhaps even go away somewhere . . . before summer 
is quite over.” 

“ And I promise you, dearest, we will. Just let me get 
through the next fortnight, and then I shall be freer. We’ll 
take the train, and go back to Rochlitz, or anywhere you like. 
In the meantime, take more care of yourself. You are far too 
pale. You will go out to-morrow, yes? — to please me? ” 

But this was a request he had often made, and generally in 
vain. 

Since the afternoon of their return, Louise had made no 
further attempt to stem or alter circumstance. She ac- 
cepted Maurice’s absences without demur. But one result 
was, that her feelings were hoarded up for the few hours he 
passed with her: these were then a working-off of emotion; 
and it seemed impossible to cram enough into them, to make 
good the starved remainder of the day. 

Maurice w T as vaguely troubled. He was himself so busy 
at this time, and so full of revived energy, that he could not 
imagine her happy, living as she did, entirely without occu- 
pation. At first he had tried to persuade her to take up her 
music again; but she would not even consider it. To all his 
arguments, she made the same reply. 

403 


404 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ I have no real talent. With me, it was only an excuse — 
to get away from home.” 

Nor could he induce her to renew her acquaintance with 
people she had known. 

“ Do you know, I once thought you didn’t care a jot what 
people said of you?” It was not a very kind thing to say; 
it slipped out unawares. 

But she did not take it amiss. “ I used not to,” she an- 
swered with her invincible frankness. “ But now — it seems — 
I do.” 

“Why, dearest? Aren’t you happy enough not to care?” 

For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked 
at him with such an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he 
could do was to draw her into his arms. 

His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his 
favourite books, but — with the exception of an occasional novel 
• — Louise was no reader. In those he brought her, she seldom 
advanced further than the first few pages; and she could sit 
for an hour without turning a leaf. He had never seen her 
with a piece of sewing or any such feminine employment in 
her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a rule, 
he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying 
to influence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she 
chose to live only for him. But on this September day, after 
the unpleasant episode with Schwarz, he had a fancy to go for 
a walk; Louise was unwilling; and he felt anew how pre- 
posterous it was for her to spend these fine autumn days, in this 
half-dark room. 

“ You are burying yourself alive — just as you did last 
winter.” 

She laid her hand on his lips. “No, no! — don’t say that. 
Now I am happy.” 

“But are you really? Sometimes I’m not sure.” He was 
tired himself this evening, and found it difficult to be con- 
vinced. “ It troubles me when I think how dull it must be 
for you. Dearest, are you — can you really be happy like this ? ” 

“ I have you, Maurice.” 

“ But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell 
me, what do you think of? ” 

“ Of you.” . 

“All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?” 

“You are mine,” she said with vehemence, and looked at 
him with what he called her “ hungry-beast ” eyes. 


MAURICE GUEST 


405 


“ You would like to eat me, I think.” 

“Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I 
love best ” — and before he knew what she was going to do, 
she had stooped, and he felt her teeth in the skin of his neck. 

“ That’s a strange way of showing your love,” he said, and 
involuntarily put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red 
marks had appeared. 

“ It’s my way. I want you — I want you. I want to feel 
that you’re mine — to make you more mine than you’ve ever 
been. I wish I had a hundred arms. I would hold you with 
them all, and never let you go.” 

“ But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you 
really believe if I had my own way, I should be anywhere but 
here with you? ” 

“No. — I don’t know. — How should I know?” 

“ Doubts? — 'beloved! ” 

“ No, no, not doubts. It’s only — oh, I don’t know what it 
is. If you could always be with me, Maurice, they wouldn’t 
come. For what I never meant to happen has happened. I 
have grown to care too much — far too much. I want you, 
I need you, at every moment of the day. I want you never to 
be out of my sight.” 

Maurice held her at arm’s length, and looked at her. “ You 
can say that — at last! ” And drawing her to him: “Patience, 
darling. Just a little patience. Some day you will never be 
alone again.” 

“ I do have patience, Maurice. But let me be patient in 
my own way. For I’m not like you. I have no room in me 
now for other things. I can’t think of anything else. If I 
had my way, we should shut ourselves up alone, and live only 
for each other. Not share it, not make it just a part of what 
we do.” 

“ But man can’t live on nectar and honey alone. It wouldn’t 
be life.” 

“ It wouldn’t be life, no. It would be more than life.” 

Some of the evening shadows seemed to invade her face. 
Her expression was childishly pathetic. He drew her to his 
knee. 

“ I should like to see you happier, Louise — yes, yes, I know ! 
— but I mean perfectly happy, as you were sometimes at Roch- 
litz. Since we came back, it has never been just the right 
thing — say what you like.” 

“ If only we had never come back ! ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


406 

“ If you still think so, darling, when I’ve finished here, we’ll 
go away at once. In the meantime, patience.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean to be unreasonable ! ” But her head was 
on his shoulder, his arms were round her; and in this position, 
nothing mattered greatly to her. 

Patience? — yes, there was need for him to exhort her to 
patience. It ate already into her soul as iron bands eat into 
flesh. The greater part of her life was now spent in practising 
it. And for sheer loathing of it, she turned over, on waking, 
and kept her eyes closed, in an attempt to prolong the night. 
For the day stretched empty before her; the hours passed, one 
by one, like grey-veiled ghosts. Yet not for a moment had she 
harboured his idea of regular occupation; she knew herself too 
well for that. In the fever into which her blood had worked 
itself she could settle to nothing: her attention was centred 
wholly in herself ; and all her senses were preternaturally acute. 
But she suffered, too, under the stress of her feeling; it 
blunted her, and made her, on the one hand, regardless of every- 
thing outside it, on the other, morbidly sensitive to trifles. She 
waited for him, hour after hour, crouched in a corner of the sofa, 
or stretched at full length, with closed eyes. 

Long before it was time for him to come, she was stationed 
at the window. She learned to know the people who appeared 
in the street between the hours of four and six so accurately that 
she could have described them blindfold. There was the old- 
faced little girl who delivered milk; there was the postman who 
emptied into his canvas receptacle, the blue letter-box affixed to 
the opposite wall ; the student with the gashed face and red cap, 
who lived a couple of doors further down, and always whistled 
the same tune; the big Newfoundland dog that stalked ma- 
jestically at his side, and answered to the name of Tasso — she 
knew them all. These two last hours were weighted with lead. 
He came, sometimes a poor half-hour too soon, but usually not 
till past six o’clock. Never, in her life, had she waited for any- 
one like this, and, towards the end of the time, a sense of injury, 
of more than mortal endurance, would steal through her and 
dull her heart towards him, in a way that frightened her. 

When, at length, she saw him turn the corner, when she had 
caught and answered his swift upward glance, she drew back 
into the shadow of the room, and hid her face in her hands. 

Then she listened. 

He had the key of the little papered door in the wall. Be- 
tween the sound of his step on the stair, and the turning of the 


MAURICE GUEST 


407 


key in the lock, there was time for her to undergo a moment of 
suspense that drove her hand to her throat. What if, after the 
tension of the afternoon, her heart, her nerves — parts of her 
over which she had no control — should not take their customary 
bound towards him? What if her pulses should not answer his? 
But before she could think her thought to the end, he was 
there; and when she saw his kind eyes alight, his eager hands 
outstretched, her nervous fears were vanquished. Maurice 
hardly gave himself time to shut the door, before catching her 
to him in a long embrace. And yet, though she did not suspect 
it, he, too, had a twinge of uncertainty on entering. Her bodily 
presence still affected him with a sense of strangeness — it took 
him a moment to get used to her again, as it were — and he was 
forced to reassure himself that nothing had changed during his 
absence, that she was still all his own. 

When the agitation of these first, few, speechless minutes had 
subsided, a great tenderness seized Louise; freeing one hand, she 
smoothed back his hair from his forehead, with movements each 
of which was a caress. As for him, his first impetuous rush of 
feeling was invariably followed by an almost morbid pity for 
her, which, in this form, was a new note in their relation to 
each other, or a harking back to the oldest note of all. When he 
considered how dependent she was on him, how her one desire 
was to have him with her, he felt that he could never repay her 
or do enough for her: and, whatever his own state of mind 
previous to coming, when once he was there, he exerted himself 
to the utmost, to cheer her. It was always she who needed con- 
solation ; and, by means of his endearments, she was petted back 
to happiness like a tired child. 

In his efforts to take her out of herself, Maurice told her how 
he had spent the day: where he had been, and whom he had 
met — every detail that he thought might interest her. She list- 
ened, in grateful silence, but she never put a question. This at 
an end, he returned once more, in a kind of eternal circle, to the 
one subject of which she never wearied. He might repeat, for 
the thousandth time, how dear she was to him, without the least 
fear that the story would grow stale in the telling. 

And once here, amidst the deep tenderness of his words, he 
felt her slowly come to life again, and unfold like a flower. 
After the long, dead day, Louise was consumed by a desire to 
drain such moments as these to the dregs. She did not let a 
word of his pass unchallenged, and all that she herself said, 
was an attempt to discover some spasm of mental ecstasy. 


MAURICE GUEST 


408 

which they had not yet experienced. Sometimes, the feeling 
grew so strong that it forced her to give an outward sign. Slip- 
ping to her knees, she gazed at him with the eyes of a faithful 
animal. 

“ What have I done to make you look at me like that ? ” asked 
Maurice, amazed. 

“What can I do to show you how I love you? Tell me 
what I can do.” 

“ Do? — what do you want to do? Be your own dear self — 
that’s all, and more than enough.” 

But she continued to look beseechingly at him, waiting for 
the word that might be the word of her salvation. 

“ Haven’t you done enough already, in giving yourself to 
me? ” he asked, seeing how she hung on his lips. 

But she repeated: “What can I do? Let me do something. 
Oh, I wish you would hurt me, or be unkind to me ! ” 

He tried to make her understand that he wished for no such 
humble adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. 
If either was to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing 
better than to put his hands under her feet. But he could neither 
coax her nor laugh her out of her absorption: she had the will 
to self-abasement ; and she remained unsatisfied, waiting for the 
word he would not speak. 

Once or twice, during these weeks, they went out in the even- 
ing, and, in the corner of some quiet restaurant, took a festive 
little meal. But, for the most part, she preferred to stay at 
home. She was not dressed, she said, or she was tired, or it 
was too hot, or it had rained. And Maurice did not urge her; 
for, on the last occasion, the evening had been spoiled for him 
by the conduct of some people at a neighbouring table ; they had 
stared at Louise, and whispered remarks about her. At home, 
she herself prepared the supper, moving indolently about the 
room, her dressing-gown dragging after her, from table to cup- 
board, and back again, often with a pause at his side, in which 
she forgot what she had set out for. Maurice disputed each 
trifling service with her ; he could only think of Louise as made 
to be waited on, slow to serve herself. 

“ Let me do it, dearest.” 

She had risen anew to fetch something. Now she stood be- 
side him, and put her arms round his neck. 

“ What can I do for you ? Tell me what I can do,” she said, 
and crushed his head against her breast. 

He loosened her fingers, and drew her to his knee. “ What 


MAURICE GUEST 


409 


do you want me to say, dear discontent? Do? — you were never 
meant to do anything in this world. Your hands were made to 
lie one on top of the other ... so! Look at them! Most 
white and most useless! ” 

“ There are things not made with hands,” she answered ob- 
scurely. She let him do what he liked ; but she kept her face 
turned away; and over her eyes passed a faint shadow of 
resignation. 

But this mood also was a transient one; hours followed, when 
she no longer sought and questioned, but when she gave, reck- 
lessly, in a wild endeavour to lose the sense of twofold being. 
And before these outbreaks, the young man was helpless. His 
past life, and such experience as he had gathered in it, grew 
fantastic and unreal, might all have belonged to some one else: 
the sole reality in a world of shadows was this soft human body 
that he held in his arms. 

Point by point, however, each of which wounded, conscious- 
ness fought itself free again. Such violent extremes of emotion 
were, in truth, contrary to his nature. They made him unsure. 
And, as the pendulum swung back, something vital in him made 
protest. 

“ Sometimes, it seems as if there were something else . . . 
something that’s not love at all . . . more like hate — yes, 
as if you hated me . . . would like to kill me.” 

Her whole body was moved by the sigh she drew. 

“ If I only could ! Then I should know that you were mine 
indeed.” 

“ Is it possible for me to be more yours than I am?” 

“ Part of you would never be mine, though we spent all our 
lives together.” 

He roused himself from his lethargy. “ How can you say 
that? — 'And yet I think I know what you mean. It’s like a 
kind of rage that comes over one — • Yes, I’ve felt it, too. Listen, 
darling! — there are things one can’t say in daylight. I, too, 
have felt . . . sometimes . . . that in spite of all my love for 
you — I mean our love for each other — yet there was still some- 
thing, a part of you, I had no power over. The real you 
is something — some one I don’t really know ... in spite of 
all the kisses. Yes” — and the more he tried to find words 
for what he meant, the more convinced he grew of its truth. 
“Nothing keeps us apart; you love me, are here in my arms, 
and yet . . . yet there’s a bit of you I can’t influence — 
that is still strange to me. How often I have to ask you why 


4io 


MAURICE GUEST 


you look at me in a certain way, or what you are thinking of! 
I never know your thoughts; IVe never once been able to read 
them; you always keep something back. — Why is it, dear? Is 
it my fault? If I could just once get at your real self — if I 
knew that once, only once, in all these weeks, you had been mine 
— every bit of you — then . . . yes, then, I believe I would 
be satisfied to . . . to — I don’t know what !” 

He had spoken in an even, monotonous voice, almost more to 
himself than to her. Now, however, he was forced to the 
opposite extreme of anxious solicitude. “ No, no, I didn’t really 
mean it. Darling! . . . hush! — don’t cry like that. I didn’t 
know what I was saying; it isn’t true, not a word of it.” 

She had flung herself across him ; her own elemental weeping 
shook her from head to foot. He realised, for the first time, 
the depth and strength of it, now that it, as it were, went 
through him, too. Gathering her to him, he made wild and fool- 
ish promises. But nothing soothed her: she wept on, until the 
dawn crept in, thinly grey, round the windows. But when it 
grew so light that the objects in the room were recovering their 
form, she fell asleep, and he hardly dared to breathe, for fear of 
disturbing her. 

By day, the sensations he had tried to express to her seemed 
the figments of the night. He needed only to be absent from her 
to feel the old restlessness tug at his heart-strings. At such mo- 
ments, it seemed to him ridiculous to torment himself about an 
infinitesimal flaw in their love, and one which perhaps existed 
only in his imagination. To be with her again was his sole 
desire; and to feel her cheek on his, to be free to run his hands 
through her exciting hair, belonged, when he was separated 
from her, to that small category of things for which he would 
have bartered his soul. 

One evening, towards the end of September, Louise watched 
for him at the window. It had been a warm autumn day, rich 
in varying lights and shades. Now it was late, nearly half-past 
six, and still he had not come: her eyes were tired with staring 
down the street. 

When at last he appeared, she saw that that he was carrying 
flowers. Her heart, which, at the sight of him, had set up a 
glad and violent beating, settled down again at once, to its nor- 
mal course. She knew what the flowers meant: in a spirit of 
candour, which had something disarming in it, he invariably 
brought them when he could not stay long with her ; and she had 
learned to dread seeing them in his hand. 


MAURICE GUEST 


411 

In very truth, he was barely inside the room before he told 
her that he could only stay for an hour. He was to play his 
trio the following evening, and now, at the last moment, the 
’cellist had been taken ill. He had spent the greater part of the 
afternoon looking for a substitute, and having found one, had 
still to interview him again, to let him know the time at which 
Schwarz had appointed an extra rehearsal for the next day. 

Maurice had mentioned more than once the date of his play- 
ing; but it had never seemed more to Louise than a disturbing 
outside fact, to be put out of mind or kissed away. She had 
forgotten all about it, and the knowledge of this overcame her 
disappointment ; she tried to atone, by being reasonable. Maurice 
had steeled himself against pleadings and despondency, and was 
grateful to her for making things easy. He wished to outdo 
himself in tender encouragement ; but she remained evasive : and 
since, in spite of himself, he could not hinder his thoughts from 
slipping forward to the coming evening, he, too, had moments 
of preoccupied silence. 

When the clock struck eight, he rose to go. In saying good- 
night, he turned her face up, and asked her had she decided if 
she were coming to hear him play. 

It was on her direct lips to reply that she had not thought 
anything about it. A glance at his face checked her. He was 
waiting anxiously for her answer: it was a matter of importance 
to him. Her previous sense of remissness was still with her, 
hampering her, making her unfree ; and for a minute she did not 
know what to say. 

“Would you mind much if I asked you not to come?” he 
said as she hesitated. 

“ No, of course not,” she hastened to respond, glad to be re- 
lieved of the decision. “If you would rather I didn’t.” 

“ It’s a fancy of mine, dearest — foolish, I know — that I shall 
get on better if you’re not there.” 

“ It’s all right. I understand.” 

When he had gone, she returned to her place at the window. 
It was a fine night: there was no moon; but the stars glittered 
furiously in the inky-blue sky, a stretch of which was visible 
above the gardens. The vastness of the night, the distance of 
sky and stars, made her shiver. Leaning her wrists on the cold, 
moist sill, she looked down into the street; it was not very far; 
but a jump from where she was, to the pavement, would suffice 
to put an end to every feeling. She was very lonely; no one 
wanted her. Here she might stand, at this forlorn post, for 


412 


MAURICE GUEST 


hours, for the whole night; no one would either know or 
care. — And her feeling of error, of unfreedom and desolation 
grew so hard to bear that, for fear she should actually throw 
herself down, she banged the window to, with a crash that 
resounded through the street. 

But there was something else at work in her to-night, 
which she could not understand. She struggled with it, as 
one struggles with a forgotten melody, which hovers behind the 
consciousness, and will not emerge. 

Except for the light thrown by a small lamp, the room was 
in shadow. She went slowly back to the sofa. On the way she 
trod on the roses; they had been knocked down and forgotten. 
She picked them up, and laid them on the cushioned seat beside 
her. They were dark crimson, and gave out a strong scent: 
Maurice had seldom brought her such beautiful roses. She sat 
with her elbows on her knees, her hands closed and pressed to 
her cheeks, as though she could only think with her muscles at 
a strain. In memory, she went over what he had said, reflected 
on what his words meant, and strove, honestly, to project herself 
into that part of his life, of which she knew nothing. But it 
was not easy ; for one thing, the smell of the roses was too strong ; 
it seemed to hinder her imagination. They had the scent that 
only deep red roses have — one which seems to come from a dis- 
tance, from the very heart of cool, pure things — and more and 
more, she felt as if something within her were trying to find 
vent in it, something that swelled up, subsided, and mounted 
again, with what was almost a physical effort. It had been the 
truth when she told him that she understood ; but it had touched 
her strangely all the same : for it had let her see into an unsus- 
pected corner of his nature. He, too, then, had a cranny in his 
brain, where such fancies lodged — such an eccentric, artist 
fancy, or whim, or superstition — as that, out of several hundred 
people, a single individual could distract and disturb. He . . . 
too! 

The little word had done it. Now she knew — knew what 
the roses had been trying to tell her. And as if invisible hands 
had touched a spring in her brain, thereby opening some se- 
cret place, the memory of a certain hour returned to her, re- 
turned with such force that she fell on her knees, and pressed 
her face to the seat of the sofa. On the floor beside her lay the 
roses. Why, oh why, had he needed to bring them to her, on 
this night of all others ? 

On the day she remembered, they had been lavished over the 


MAURICE GUEST 


4i3 


room — one June evening, two years ago. And ever after- 
wards, the scent of blood-red roses had been associated for her 
with one of the sweet, leading themes in Beethoven’s violin con- 
certo. There was a special concert that night at the Conser- 
vatorium ; the hall was filled to the last place. She waited with 
him in the green-room, until his turn came to play. Then she 
went into the hall, and stood at the back, under the gallery. 
Once more, she was aware of the stir that ran through the 
audience, as Schilsky walked down the platform. Hardly, how- 
ever, had he drawn his bow across the strings, when she felt a 
touch on her arm, and a Russian, who was an intimate friend 
of his, beckoned her outside. There, he told her that he had 
been sent to ask her to leave the hall; and they smiled at 
each other, in understanding of the whim. Afterwards, she 
learned how, just about to step on to the platform, Schilsky had 
had a presentiment that things would go wrong if she remained 
inside. In his gratitude, and in the boyish exultation with 
which success filled him, he had collected all the roses, and 
wantonly pulled them to pieces. Red petals fell like flakes of 
red snow; and, crushed and bruised, the fragile leaves had 
yielded a scent, tenfold increased. 

While it lasted, the vision was painfully intense : on returning 
to herself, she was obliged to look round and think where she 
was. The lamp burned steadily; the dull room was just as she 
had left it. With a cry, she buried her face in the cushions 
again, and held her hands to her ears. 

More, more, and more again! She was as hungry for these 
memories as a child for dainties. She was starved for them. 
And now, dead to the present, she relived the past happy hours 
of triumph and excitement, not one of which had hung heavy, 
in each of which her craving for sensation had been stilled. She 
saw herself as she had then been, proud, secure, unspeakably 
content. Forgotten words rang in her ears, words of love and 
of anger, words that were like ointment and like knives. Then, 
not a day had been empty or tedious; life was always highly 
coloured, and there was neither pleasure nor pain that she had 
not tasted to the full. Even the suffering she had gone through, 
for his sake, was no longer hateful to her. Anything — anything 
rather than this dead level of monotony on which she had fallen. 

When, finally, she raised her head, she might, for all she 
knew, have been absent for days. Things had lost their familiar 
aspect; she had once more lived right through the great experi- 
ence of her life. Putting her hands to her forehead, she tried to 


4H 


MAURICE GUEST 


force her thoughts back to reality. Then, stiffly, she rose from 
her knees. In doing so, she touched the roses. With a gesture 
that was her real awakening, she caught them up and pressed 
them to her face. It was a satisfaction to her that fingers and 
cheeks were pricked by their thorns. She was conscious of 
wishing to hurt herself. With her lips on the cool buds, she 
stammered broken words: “ Maurice — my poor Maurice! ” and 
kissed the flowers, feeling as if, in some occult way, he would be 
aware of her kisses, of the love she was thus expending on him. 

For, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she was sensible of a 
great compassion for him ; and with each pressure of her lips to 
the roses, she implored his forgiveness for her unpremeditated 
desertion. She called to mind his tenderness, his unceasing care 
of her, and, closing her eyes, stretched out her arms to him, in 
the empty room. Already she began to live for the following 
evening, when he would come again. Now, only to sleep through 
as many as she could of the hours that separated them ! She 
would be to him the next night, what she had never yet been: 
his own rival in fondness. And as a beginning, she crossed the 
room, and put the fading roses in a pitcher of water. 


IV 


Towards seven o’clock the following evening, Maurice loitered 
about the vestibule of the Conservatorium. In spite of his at- 
tempt to time himself, he had arrived too early, and his 
predecessor on the programme had still to play two movements 
of a sonata by Beethoven. 

As he stood there, Madeleine entered by the street-door. 

“ Is that you? ” she asked, in the ironical tone she now habitu- 
ally used to him. “You look just as if you were posing for the 
John in a Rubens Crucifixion. — Feel shaky? No? You ought 
to, you know. One plays all the better for it. — Well, good luck 
to you! I’ll hold my thumbs.” 

He went along the passage to the little green-room, at the 
heels of his string-players. On seeing them go by, it had oc- 
curred to him that he might draw their attention to a passage 
in the Variations , with which he had. not been satisfied at 
rehearsal that day. But when he caught them up, they were 
so deep in talk that he hesitated to interrupt. The ’cellist, a 
greasy, little fellow with a mop of touzled hair, was relating an 
adventure he had had the night before. His droll way of telling 
it was more amusing than the long-winded story, and he him- 
self was more tickled by it than was the violinist, a lanky Ger- 
man-American boy, with oily black hair and a pimpled face. 
Throughout, both tuned their instruments assiduously, with that 
air of inattention common to string-players. 

Meanwhile, the sonata by Beethoven ran its course. While 
the story-teller still smacked his lips, it came to an end, and the 
performer, a tall, Polish girl, with a long, sallow, bird-like 
neck, round which was wound a piece of black velvet, descended 
the steps. Behind her was heard the applause of many hands. 
As this showed no sign of ceasing, Schwarz, who had come out 
of the hall by a lower door, bade her return and bow her 
thanks. At his words, the girl burst into tears. 

" Na, na, na! " he said soothingly. “ What’s all this about ? 
You did excellently.” 

She seized his hand and clung to it. The ’cellist ran to fetch 
water; the other two young men were embarrassed, and looked 
away. 

Here, however, several friends burst into the room, and bore 
4i5 


MAURICE GUEST 


416 

Fraulein Prybowski off. Schwarz gave the signal, the string- 
players picked up their instruments, and the little procession, 
with Maurice at its head, mounted the steps to the platform. 

Although before an audience for the first time in his life, 
Maurice had never felt more composed. Passing by the organ, 
and the empty seats of the orchestra, he descended to the front 
of the platform, where two grand pianos stood side by side; 
and, as he went, he noted that the hall was exceptionally well 
filled. He let down the lid of the piano to the peg for chamber- 
music; he lowered the piano-chair, and flicked the keys with his 
handkerchief. And Schwarz, sitting by him, to turn the pages 
of the music, felt so sure of this pupil’s coolness that he yawned, 
and stroked the insides of his trouser-legs. 

Maurice was just ready for the start, when the ’cellist, who 
was restless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for 
him was insecure ; rising from his seat, he went to fetch another 
from the back of the platform. In the delay that ensued, 
Maurice looked round at the audience. He saw innumerable 
heads and faces, all turned expectantly towards him, like lines 
of globular fruits. His eye ranged indifferently over the oc- 
cupants of the front seats — strange faces, which told him noth- 
ing — until his attention was arrested by a face almost directly 
beneath him, in the second row. For the flash of a second, he 
thought he knew the person to whom it belonged, and struggled 
to recall a name. Then, almost as swiftly, he dismissed the 
idea. It was, however, a face of that kind which, once seen, is 
never forgotten — a frog-like face, with protruding eyes, and the 
frog’s expressive leer. Somewhere, not very long ago, this face 
had been before him, and had stared at him in the same discon- 
certing manner — but where? when? In the few seconds that 
remained, his brain worked furiously, sped back in desperate 
haste over all the likely places where he might have seen it. And 
a restaurant evolved itself ; a table in a secluded corner ; chrysan- 
themums and their acrid scent; a screen, round which this re- 
pulsive face had peered. It had fixed them both, with such 
malevolence that it had destroyed his pleasure, and he had per- 
suaded Louise to go home. His memory was now so alert that 
he could recall the man’s two companions as well. 

The scene built itself up with inconceivable rapidity. 
And while he was still absorbed by it, Schwarz raised a 
decisive hand. It was the signal to begin; he obeyed unthink- 
ingly; and was at the bottom of the first page before he 
knew it. 


MAURICE GUEST 


4i7 

# Throughout the whole of the opening movement, he was not 
rightly awake to what he was doing. His fingers, like well- 
drilled soldiers, went automatically through their work, neither 
blundering nor forgetting; but the mind which should have 
controlled them was unable to concentrate itself: he heard him- 
self play as though he were listening to some one else. He 
was only roused by the burst of applause that succeeded the 
final chords. As he struck the first notes of the Andante with 
Variations , he nerved himself for an effort; but now, as if it 
were the result of his previous inattention, an odd uneasiness 
beset him ; and his beginning to weigh each note as he 
played it, his fingers hesitated and grew less sure. Having 
failed, through over-care, in the rounding of a turn, he resolved 
to let things go as they would, and his thoughts wander at 
will. The movements of the trio succeeded one another; the 
Variations ceased, and were followed by the crisp gaiety of the 
Minuet. The lights above his head were reflected in the 
shining ebony of the piano; regularly, every moment or two, 
he was struck by the appearance of Schwarz’s broad, fat hand, 
which crossed his range of vision to turn a leaf; he meditated 
absently on a sharp uplifting of this hand that occurred, as 
though the master were dissatisfied with the rhythm — the ’cel- 
list’s fault, no doubt: he had been inexact at rehearsal, and, 
this evening, was too much taken up with his own witticisms 
beforehand, to think about what he had to do. And thus 
the four divisions of the trio slipped past, separated by a 
disturbing noise of hands, which continued to seem as unreal 
to Maurice as everything else. Only as the last notes of the 
Prestissimo died away, in the disappointing, ineffectual scales 
in C major, with which the trio closed — not till then did he 
grasp that the event to which he had looked forward for many 
weeks was behind him, and also that no one present knew less of 
how it had passed off than he himself. 

With his music in his hand, he turned to Schwarz, to learn 
what success he had had, from the master’s face. According 
to custom, Schwarz shook hands with him; he also nodded; 
but he did not smile. He was, however, in a hurry; the old, 
white-haired director had left his seat, and stood waiting to 
speak to him. Both ’cellist and violinist had vanished on the 
instant; the audience, eager as ever at the end of a concert to 
shake off an imposed restraint, had risen while Maurice still 
played the final notes; and, by this time, the hall was all but 
empty. 


MAURICE GUEST 


418 

He slowly ascended the platform. Now that it was over, he 
felt how tired he was; his very legs were tired, as though he 
had walked for miles. The green-room was deserted; the 
gas-jet had been screwed down to a peep. None of his 
friends had come to say a word to him. He had really hardly 
expected it; but, all the same, a hope had lurked in him that 
Krafft would perhaps afterwards make some sign — even Made- 
leine. As, however, neither of them appeared, he seemed to 
read a confirmation of his failure in their absence, and he loi- 
tered for some time in the semi-darkness, unwilling to face the 
dispersing crowd. When at length he went down the passage, 
only a few stragglers remained. One or two acquaintances 
congratulated him in due form, but he knew neither well enough 
to try to get at the truth. As he was nearing the street-door, 
however, Dove came out of the Bureau. He made for Mau- 
rice at once; his manner was eager, his face bore the imprint 
of interesting news. 

“ I say, Guest ! ” he cried, while still some way off. “ An 
odd coincidence. Young Leumann is to play this very same 
trio next week. A little chap in knickerbockers, you know — 
pupils of Renders. He is said to have a glorious legato — just 
the very thing for the Variations ” 

“ Indeed ? ” said Maurice with a well-emphasised dryness. 
His tone nudged Dove’s memory. 

“ By the way, all congratulations, of course,” he hastened 
to add. “ Never heard you play better. Especially the 
Menuetto. Some people sitting behind me were reminded of 
Rubinstein.” 

“ Well, good-night, I’m off,” said Maurice, and, even as 
he spoke, he shot away, leaving his companion in some surprise. 

Once out of Dove’s sight, he took off his hat and passed his 
hand over his forehead. Any slender hope he might have had 
was now crushed; his playing had been so little remarkable 
that even Dove had been on the point of overlooking it alto- 
gether. 

Louise threw herself into his arms. At last! she exulted to 
herself. But his greeting had not its usual fervour; instead 
of kissing her, he laid his face against her hair. Instantly, she 
became uncertain. She did not quite know what she had been 
expecting ; perhaps it had been something of the old, pleasurable 
excitement that she had learnt to associate with an occasion 
like the present. She put back her head and looked at him, 
and her look was a question. 


MAURICE GUEST 


419 

“Yes. At least it’s over, thank goodness!” he said in 
reply. 

Not knowing what answer to make to this, she led him 
to the sofa. They sat down, and, for a few minutes, neither 
spoke. Then, he did what on the way there, he had imagined 
himself doing: laid his head on her lap, and himself placed 
her hands on his hair. She passed them backwards and for- 
wards; her sense of having been repulsed, yielded, and she 
tried to change the current of his thoughts. 

“ Did you notice, Maurice, as you came along, how full the 
air was of different scents to-night ? ” she asked as her cool 
hands went to and fro. “ It was like an evening in July. I was 
at the window trying to make them out. But the roses were 
too strong for them ; for you see — or rather you have not seen — 
all the roses I have got for you — yes, just dark red roses. This 
afternoon I went to the little shop at the corner, and bought all 
they had. The pretty girl served me — do you remember the 
pretty girl with the yellow hair, who tried to make friends 
with you last summer? You like roses, too, don’t you? — 
though not as much as I do. They were always my favourite 
flowers. As a child, I used to imagine what it would be like 
to gather them for a whole day, without stopping. But, like 
all my wishes then, this had to be postponed, too, till that won- 
derful future, which was to bring me all I wanted. There 
w T ere only a few bushes where I lived ; it was too dry for them. 
But the smell of them takes me back — always. I have only 
to shut my eyes, and I am full of the old extravagant longings 
— the childish impatience with time, which seemed to crawl 
so slowly . . . even to stand still.” 

“ Tell me all about it,” he murmured, without raising his 
head. 

She smiled and humoured him. 

“ I like flowers best for their scents,” she went on. “ No 
matter what beautiful colours they have. A camelia is a fool- 
ish flower; like a blind man’s face— the chief thing is wanting. 
But then, of course, the smell must remind one of pleasant 
things. It’s strange, isn’t it, how much association has to do 
with pleasure?— or pain. Some things affect me so strongly 
that they make me wretched. There’s music I can’t listen to ; 
I have to put my hands to my ears, and run away from it ; and 
all because it takes me back to an unhappy hour, or to a time 
of my life that I hated. There are streets I never walk 
through, even words I dread to hear anyone say, because they 


420 


MAURICE GUEST 


are connected with some one I disliked, or a day I would rather 
not have lived. And it is just the same with smells. Wood 
smouldering outside! — and all the country round is smoky 
with bush fires. Mimosa in the room — and I can feel the sun 
beating down on deserted shafts and the stillness of the bush. 
Rotting leaves and the smell of moist earth, and I am a little 
girl again, in short dresses, standing by a grave — my father’s — 
to which I was driven in a high buggy, between two men in 
black coats. I can’t remember crying at all, or even feeling 
sorry; I only smelt the earth — it was in the rainy season and 
there was water in the grave. — But flowers give me my pleas- 
antest memories. Passion-flowers and periwinkles — you will 
say they have no smell, but it’s not true. Flat, open passion- 
flowers — red or white — with purplish-fringed centres, have a 
honey-smell, and make me think of long, hot, cloudless days, 
which seemed to have neither beginning nor end. And little 
periwinkles have a cool green smell; for they grew along an 
old paling fence, which was shady and sometimes even damp. 
And violets? I never really cared for violets; not till ... I 
mean ... I never ...” 

She had entangled herself, and broke off so abruptly that he 
moved. He was afraid this soothing flow of words was going 
to cease. 

“ Yes, yes, go on, tell me some more — about violets.” 

She hastened to recover herself. “ They are silly little flowers. 
Made to wither in one’s dress ... or to be crushed. Unless 
one could have them in such masses that they filled the room. 
But lilac, Maurice, great sprays and bunches of lilac — white 
and purple — you know, don’t you, who will always be asso- 
ciated with lilac for me? Do you remember some of those even- 
ings at the theatre, on the balcony between the acts? The gal- 
lery was so hot, and out there it seemed as if the whole town 
were steeped in lilac. Or walking home — those glorious nights 
— when some one was so silent ... so moody — do you 
remember? ” 

At the peculiar veiled tone that had come into her voice; at 
this reminder of a past day of alternate rapture and despair, so 
different from the secured happiness of the present; at the 
thought of this common memory that had built itself up for 
them round a flower’s scent, a rush of grateful content over- 
came Maurice, and, for the first time since entering the room, 
he looked up at her with a lover’s eyes. 

Safe, with her arms round him, he was strong enough to face 


MAURICE GUEST 


421 

the worst. “ How good you are to me, dearest! And I don’t 
deserve it. To-night, you might just have sent me away again, 
when I came. For I was in a disagreeable mood — and still am. 
But you won’t give me up just yet for all that, will you? How- 
ever despondent I get about myself? For you are all I have, 
Louise — in the whole world. Yes, I may as well confess it to 
you, to-night was a failure — not a noisy, open one . . . but 
all the same, it’s no use calling it anything else.” 

He had laid his head on her lap again, so did not see her 
face. While he spoke, Louise looked at him, in a kind of 
unwilling surprise. Instinctively, she ceased to pass her hands 
over his hair. 

“ Oh, no, Maurice,” she then protested, but weakly, without 
conviction. 

“ Yes — failure,” he repeated, and put more emphasis than be- 
fore on the word. “ It’s no good beating about the bush. — And 
do you realise what it — what failure means for us, Louise?” 

“ Oh, no,” she said again, vaguely trying to ward off what 
she foresaw was coming. “And why talk about it to-night? 
You are tired. Things will seem different in the morning. Shut 
your eyes again, and lie quite still.” 

But, the ice once broken, he felt the need of speaking — of 
speaking out relentlessly all that was in him. And, as he talked, 
he found it impossible to keep still; he paced the room. He 
was very pale and very voluble, and made a clean breast of 
everything that troubled him; not so much, however, with the 
idea of confessing it to her, as of easing his own mind. And 
now, again, he let her see into his real self, and, unlike the 
previous occasion, it was here more than a glimpse that she 
caught. He was distressingly frank with her. She heard now, 
for the first time, of the foolish ambitions with which he had 
begun his studies in Leipzig; heard of their gradual subsidence, 
and his humble acceptance of his inferiority, as well as of his 
present fear that, when his time came to an end, he would have 
nothing to show for it — and under the influence of what had 
just happened, this fear grew more vivid. It was one thing, he 
made clear to her, and unpleasant enough at best, to have to 
find yourself to rights as a mediocrity, when you had hoped with 
all your heart that you were something more. But what if, 
having staked everything on it, you should discover that you had 
mistaken your calling altogether? 

“ To-night, you see, I think I should have been a better 
chimney-sweep. The real something that makes the musician 


422 


MAURICE GUEST 


— even the genuinely musical outsider — is wanting in me. 
I’ve learnt to see that, by degrees, though I don’t know in the 
least what it is. — But even suppose I were mistaken — who 
could tell me that I was? One’s friends are only too glad to 
avoid giving a downright opinion, and then, too, which of 
them would one care to trust? I believe in the end I shall go 
straight to Schwarz, and get him to tell me what he thinks 
of me — whether I’m making a fool of myself or not.” 

“ Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Louise said quickly. 

It was the first time she had interrupted him. She had sat 
and followed his restless movements with a look of appre- 
hension. A certain board in the floor creaked when he trod 
on it, and she found herself listening, each time, for the creak- 
ing of this board. She was sorry for him, but she could not 
attach the importance he did to his assumed want of success, 
nor was she able to subdue the feeling of distaste with which 
his doubtings inspired her. It was so necessary, too, this 
outpouring; she had never felt curious about the side of his 
nature which was not the lover’s side. To-night, it became 
clear to her that she would have preferred to remain in ig- 
norance of it. And besides, what he said was so palpable^ so 
undeniable, that she could not understand his dragging the 
matter to the surface: she had never thought of him but as one 
of the many honest workers, who swell the majority, and are 
not destined to rise above the crowd. She had not dreamed of 
his considering himself in another light, and it was painful to 
her now, to find that he had done so. To put an end to such 
embarrassing confidences, she went over to him, and, with her 
hands on his shoulders, her face upturned, said all the consoling 
words she could think of, to make him forget. They had 
never yet failed in their effect. But to-night too much was at 
work in Maurice, for him to be influenced by them. He kissed 
her, and touched her cheek with his hand, then began anew; 
and she moved away, with a slight impatience, which she did 
not try to conceal. 

“You brood too much, Maurice . . . and you exaggerate 
things, too. What if every one took himself so seriously? 
— and talked of failure because on a single occasion he didn’t 
do himself justice?” 

“ It’s more than that with me, dear. — But it’s a bad habit, 
I know — not that I really mean to take myself too seriously; 
but all my life I have been forced to worry about things, and 
to turn them over.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


423 


“ It’s unhealthy always to be looking into yourself. Let 
things go more, and they’ll carry you with them.” 

He took her hands. “What wise-sounding words! And 
I’m in the wrong, I know, as usual. But, in this case, it’s 
impossible not to worry. What happened this evening seems 
a trifle to you, and no doubt would to every one else, too. But 
I had made a kind of touchstone of it; it was to help to decide 
the future — that hideously uncertain future of ours! I be- 
lieve now, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t care whether I 
ever come to anything or not. Of course, I should rather 
have been a success — we all would! — but caring for you has 
swallowed up the ridiculous notions I once had. For your 
sake — it’s you I torment myself about. What is to become of 
us?” 

“If that’s all, Maurice! Something will turn up, I’m 
sure it will. Have a little patience, and faith in luck ... or 
fate ... or whatever you like to call it.” 

“ That’s a woman’s way of looking at things,” 

He was conscious of speaking somewhat unkindly; but he 
was hurt by her lack of sympathy. Instead, however, of 
smoothing things over, he was impelled, by an unconquerable 
impulse, to disclose himself still further. “ Besides, that’s not 
all,” he said, and avoided her eyes. “ There’s something else, 
and I may just as well make a clean breast of it. It’s not only 
that the future is every bit as shadowy to-night as it has always 
been: I haven’t advanced it by an inch. But I feel to-night 
that if I could have been what I once hoped to be — no, how 
shall I put it? You know, dear, from the very beginning there 
has been something wrong, a kind of barrier between us — 
hasn’t there? How often I’ve tried to find out what it is! 
Well, to-night I seem to know. If I were not such an out-and- 
out mediocrity, if I had really been able to achieve something, 
you would care for me — yes, that’s it! — as you can’t possibly 
care now. You would have to; you wouldn’t be able to help 
yourself.” 

Her first impulsive denial died on her lips; as he continued 
to speak, she seemed to feel in his words an intention to wound 
her, or, at least, to accuse her of want of love. When she 
spoke, it was in a cool voice, as though she were on her guard 
against being touched too deeply. 

“ That has nothing whatever to do with it,” she said. “ It’s 
you yourself, Maurice, I care for — not what you can or 
can’t do.” 


424 


MAURICE GUEST 


But these words added fuel to his despondency. “ Yes, that’s 
just it,” he answered. “ For you, I’m in two parts, and one of 
them means nothing to you. I’ve felt it, often enough, though 
I’ve never spoken of it till to-night. Only one side of me 
really matters to you. But if I’d been able to accomplish 
what I once intended — to make a name for myself, or some- 
thing of that sort — then it w T ould all have been different. I 
could have forced you to be interested in every single thing 
I did — not only in the me that loves you, but in every jot of 
my outside life as well.” 

Louise did not reply: she had a moment of genuine despond- 
ency. The staunch tenderness she had been resolved to feel for 
him this evening, collapsed and shrivelled up; for the morbid 
self-probing in which he was indulging made her see him with 
other eyes. What he said belonged to that category of things 
which are too true to be put into words: why could not he, like 
every one else, let them rest, and act as if they did not exist? It 
was as clear as day: if he were different, the whole story of their 
relations would be different, too. But as he could not change 
his nature, what was the use of talking about it, and of turning 
out to her gaze, traits of mind with which she could not pos- 
sibly sympathise? Standing, a long white figure, beside the 
piano, she let her arms hang weakly at her sides. She did not 
try to reason with him again, or even to comfort him; she let 
him go on and on, always in the same strain, till her nerves 
suddenly rebelled at the needless irritation. 

“ Oh, why must you be like this to-night? ” she broke in on 
him. “ Why try to destroy such happiness as we have ? Can 
you never be content?” 

From the way in which he seized upon these words, it seemed 
as if he had only been waiting for her to say them. “ Such 
happiness as we have ! ” he repeated. “ There ! — listen ! — you 
yourself admit it. Admit all Eve been saying. — And do you 
think I can realise that, and be happy? No, Fve suffered under 
it from the first day. Oh, why, loving you as I do, could I not 
have been different? — more worthy of you. Why couldn’t I, 
too, be one of those favoured mortals . . .? Listen to me,” 
he said lowering his voice, and speaking rapidly. “ Let me 
make another confession. Do you know why to-night is doubly 
hard to bear? It’s because — yes, because I know you must be 
forced — and not to-night only, but often — to compare me — 
what I am and what I can do — with . . . with . . . you 
know who I mean. It’s inevitable — the comparison must be 


MAURICE GUEST 


425 

thrust on you every day of your life. But does that, do you 
think, make it any the easier for me?” 

As the gist of what he was trying to say was borne in upon 
her, Louise winced. Her face lost its tired expression, and 
grew hard. “You are breaking your word,” she said, in a 
tone she had never before used to him. “You promised me 
once, the past should never be mentioned between us.” 

“ I’m not blind, Louise,” he went on, as though she had not 
spoken. “ Nor am I in a mood to-night to make myself any 
illusions. The remembrance of what he was — he was never 
doubtful of himself, was he? — must always — has always — 
stood between us, while I have racked my brains to discover 
what it was. To-night it came over me like a flash that it was 
he — that he ... he spoiled you utterly for anyone else; 
made it impossible for you to care for anyone who wasn’t made 
of the same stuff as he was. It would never have occurred to 
him, would it, to torment you and make you suffer for his own 
failure? For the very good reason that he never was a failure. 
Oh, I haven’t the least doubt what a sorry figure I must cut 
beside him!” 

The unhappy words came out slowly, and seemed to linger 
in the air. Louise did not break the pause that followed, and 
by her silence, assented to what he said. She still stood motion- 
less beside the piano. 

“ Or tell me,” Maurice cried abruptly, with a ray of hope ; 
“ tell me the truth about it all, for once. Was it mere exag- 
geration, or was he really worth so much more than all the rest 
of us? Of course he could play — I know that — but so can 
many a fool. But all the other part of it — his incredible talent, 
or luck in everything he touched — was it just report, or was it 
really something else? — Tell me.” 

“ He was a genius,” she answered, very coldly and dis- 
tinctly; and her voice warned him once more that he was 
trespassing on ground to which he had no right. But he was 
too excited to take the warning. 

“A genius!” he echoed. “He was a genius! Yes, what 
did I tell you? Your very words imply a comparison as you 
say them. For I? — what am I? A miserable bungler, a 
wretched dilettant — or have you another word for it? Oh, 
never mind — don’t be afraid to say it! — Tm not sensitive to- 
night. I can bear to hear your real opinion of me ; for it could 
not possibly be lower than my own. Let us get at the truth 
for once, by all means! — But what I want to know,” he cried 


MAURICE GUEST 


426 

a moment later, “ is, why one should be given so much and the 
other so little. To one all the talents and all your love; and 
the other unhappy wretch remains an outsider his whole life 
long. When you speak in that tone about him, I could wish 
with all my heart that he had been no better than I am. It 
would give me pleasure to know that he, too, had only been a 
dabbling amateur — the victim of a pitiable wish to be what he 
hadn’t the talent for.” 

He could not face her amazement; he stared at the yellow 
globe of the lamp till his eyes smarted. 

“ It no doubt seems despicable to you,” he went on, “ but 
I can’t help it. I hate him for the way he was able to absorb 
you. He’s my worst enemy, for he has made it impossible for 
you — the woman I love — to love me wholly in return. — Of 
course, you can’t — you wont understand. You’re only aghast 
at what you think my littleness. Of all I’ve gone through, you 
know nothing, and don’t want to know. But with him, it was 
different; you had no difficulty in understanding him. He had 
the power over you. Look! — at this very moment, you are 
siding, not w T ith me, but with him. All my struggling and 
striving counts for nothing. — Oh, if I could only understand 
you ! ” He moved to and fro in his agitation. “ Why is a 
woman so impossible? Does nothing matter to her but tan- 
gible success? Do care and consideration carry no weight? — 
even matched against the blackguardly egoism of what you call 
genius? — Or will you tell me that he considered you? Didn’t 
he treat you from beginning to end like the scoundrel he w T as? ” 

She raised hostile eyes. “You have no right to say that,” 
she said in a small, icy voice, which seemed to put him at an 
infinite distance from her. “You are not able to judge him. 
You didn’t know him as ... as I did.” 

With the last words a deeper note came into her voice, and 
this was all Maurice heard. A frenzied fear seized him. 

“ Louise! ” he cried violently. “ You care for him still! ” 

She started, and raised her arms, as if to ward off a blow. 
“I don’t ... I don’t . . . God knows I don’t! I hate 
him — you know I do ! ” She had clapped both hands to her 
face, and held them there. When she looked up again, she 
was able to speak as quietly as before. “ But do you want to 
make me hate you, too? Do you think it gives me a higher 
opinion of you, to hear you talk like that about some one I 
once cared for? How can I find it anything but ungenerous? 
— Yes, you are right, he was different — in every way. He 


MAURICE GUEST 


427 

didn’t know what it meant to be envious of anyone. He was 
as different from you as day from night.” 

Maurice was hurt to the quick. “ Now I know your real 
opinion of me! Till now you have been considerate enough to 
hide it. But to-night I have heard it from your own lips. You 
despise me ! ” 

“ Well, you drove me to say it,” she burst out, wounded in 
her turn. “ I should never have said it of my own accord — 
never! Oh, how ungenerous you are! It’s not the first time 
you’ve goaded me into saying something, and then turned round 
on me for it. You seem to enjoy finding out things you can 
feel hurt by. — But have I ever complained? Did I not take 
you just as you were, and love you — yes, love you! I knew 
you couldn’t be different — that it wasn’t your fault if you 
were faint-hearted and . . . and — But you? — what do you 
do? You talk as if you worship the ground I walk on: but 
you can’t let me alone. You are always trying to change me — 
to make me what you think I ought to be.” 

Her words came in haste, stumbling one over the other, as 
it became plain to her how deeply this grievance, expressed now 
for the first time, had eaten into her soul. “You’ve never 
said to yourself, she’s what she is because it’s her nature 
to be. You want to remake my nature and correct it. You 
are always believing something is wrong. You knew very 
well, long ago, that the best part of me had belonged to 
some one else. You swore it didn’t matter. But to-night, 
because there’s absolutely nothing else you can cavil at, you 
drag it up again — in spite of your promises. I have always been 
frank with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it’s been my 
old fault of .giving everything, when it would have been wiser 
to keep something back, or at least to pretend to. I might 
have taken a lesson from you, in parsimonious reserve. For 
there’s a part of you, you couldn’t give away — not if you lived 
with a person for a hundred years.” 

Of all she said, the last words stung him most. 

“Yes, and why?” he cried. “Ask yourself why! You are 
unjust, as only a woman can be. You say there’s a part of me 
you don’t know. If that’s true, what does it mean? It means 
you don’t want to know it. You don’t want it even to exist. 
You want everything to belong to you. You don’t care for me 
well enough to be interested in that side of my life which has 
nothing to do with you. Your love isn’t strong enough for 
that.” 


428 MAURICE GUEST 

“Love! — need we talk about love?” Her face wis so 
unhappy that it seemed to have grown years older. “ Love is 
something quite different. It takes everything just as it is. 
You have never really loved me.” 

“ I have never really loved you? ” V r 

He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand 
them, and with his right hand grasped the table; the ground 
seemed to be slipping from under his feet. But Louise did not 
offer to retract what she had said, and Maurice had a moment 
of bewilderment: there, not three yards from him, sat the 
woman who was the centre of his life; Louise sat there, and 
with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts on his 
love for her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated. 

“ I not love you ! ” 

His voice was rough, had escaped control. “ You have 
only to lift your finger, and I’ll throw myself from that window 
on to the pavement.” 

Louise sat as if turned to stone. 

“Don’t you hear?” he cried more loudly. “Look 
up ! . . . tell me to do it ! ” 

Still she did not move. 

“Louise, Louise!” he implored, throwing himself down 
before her. “Speak to me! Don’t you hear me? — Louise!” 

“ Oh, yes, I hear,” she said at last. “ I hear how ready you 
are with promises you know you will not be asked to keep. 
But the small, everyday things — those are what you won’t do 
for me.” 

“ Tell me . . . tell me what I shall do! ” 

“ All I ask of you is to be happy. And to let me be happy, 
too.” 

He stammered promises and entreaties. Never, never again! 
— if only this once she would forgive him; if only she would 
smile at him, and let the light come back to her eyes. He had 
not been responsible for his actions this evening. 

“ It was more of a strain than I knew. And after it was 
over, I had to vent my disappointment somehow; and it was 
you, poor darling, who suffered. Forgive me, Louise! — But 
try, dear, a little to understand why it was. Can’t you see 
that I was only like that through fear — yes, fear! — that some- 
how you might slip from me. I can’t help feeling, one day 
you will have had enough of me, and will see me for what I 
really am.” 

He tried to put his arms round her, but she held back: she 


MAURICE GUEST 


429 

had no desire to be reconciled. The sole response she made to 
his beseeching words was: “ I want to be happy.” 

“ But you shall. — Do you think I live for anything else? 
Only forgive me ! Remember the happiest hours we have spent 
together. Come back to me; be mine again! Tell me I am 
forgiven.” 

He w r as in despair; he could not get at her, under her coat- 
ing of insensibility. And since his words had no power to move 
her, he took to kissing her hands. She left them limply in his; 
she did not resist him. From this, he drew courage: he began 
to treat her more inconsiderately, compelling her to bend down 
to him, making her feel his strength; and he did not cease his 
efforts till her head had sunk forward, heavy and submissive, 
on his shoulder. 

They were at peace again: and the joys of reconciliation 
seemed almost worth the price they had paid for them. 


V 


The following morning, having drunk his coffee, Maurice 
pushed back the metal tray on which the delf-ware stood, and 
remained sitting idle with his hands before him. It was nine 
o’clock, and the houses across the road were beginning to catch 
stray sunbeams. By this time, his daily work was as a rule 
in full swing ; but to-day he was in no hurry to commence. He 
was even more certain now than he had been on the night be- 
fore, of his lack of success; and the idea of starting anew 
on the dull round filled him with distaste. He had been 
so confident that his playing would, in some way or other, 
mark a turning-point in his musical career; and lo! it had 
gone off with as little fizz and effect as a damp rocket. Light- 
ing a cigarette, he indulged in ironical reflections. But, none 
the less, he heard the minutes ticking past, and as he was not 
only a creature of habit, but had also a troublesome northern 
conscience, he rose before the cigarette had formed its second 
spike of ash, and went to the piano: no matter how rebellious 
he felt, this was the only occupation open to him; and so he 
set staunchly out on the unlovely mechanical exercising, which 
no pianist can escape. Meanwhile, he recapitulated the scene 
in the concert hall, from the few anticipatory moments, 
when the ’cellist related amatory adventures, to the abrupt 
leave he had taken of Dove at the door of the building. And 
in the course of doing this, he was invaded by a mild and 
agreeable doubt. On such shadowy impressions as these had 
he built up his assumption of failure! Was it possible to be 
so positive? The unreal state of mind in which he had played, 
hindered him from acting as his own judge. The fact that 
Schwarz had not been effusive, and that none of his friends had 
sought him out, admitted of more than one interpretation. The 
only real proof he had was Dove’s manner to him ; and was not 
Dove always too full of his own affairs, or, at least, the affairs 
of those who were not present at the moment, to have any at- 
tention to spare for the person he was actually with ? At the idea 
that he was perhaps mistaken, Maurice grew so unsettled that 
he rose from the piano. But, by the time he took his seat again, 
he had wavered; say what he would, he could not get rid of 

430 


MAURICE GUEST 


43i 


the belief that if he had achieved anything out of the common, 
Madeleine would not have made it her business to avoid him. 
After this, however, his fluctuating hopes rallied, then sank 
once more, until it ended in his leaving the piano. For it was of 
no use trying to concentrate his thoughts until he knew. 

Even as he said this to himself, his resolution w r as taken. 
There was only one person to whom he could apply, and that 
was Schwarz. The proceeding might be unusual, but then the 
circumstances in which he was placed were unusual, too. Be- 
sides, he asked neither praise nor flattery, merely a candid 
opinion. 

If, however, he faced Schwarz on this point, there w T ere 
others on which he might as well get certainty at the same time. 
The matter of the Prufung, for instance, had still to be decided. 
So much depended on the choice of piece. His fingers itched 
towards Chopin or Mendelssohn, for the sole reason that the 
technique of these composers was in his blood. Whereas 
Beethoven! — he knew from experience how difficult it was to 
get a satisfactory effect out of the stern barenesses of Beethoven. 
They demanded a skill he could never hope to possess. 

Between five and six that afternoon, he made his way to the 
Sebastian Bach-Strasse , where Schwarz lived. It was hot .in 
the new, shadeless streets through which he passed, and also 
in crossing the Johannapark ; hardly a hint of September was 
in the air. He walked at a slow pace, in order not to arrive 
too early, and, for some reason unclear to himself, avoided 
stepping on the joins of the paving-stones. 

On hearing that he had not come for a lesson, the dirty maid- 
servant, who opened the third-floor door to him, showed him 
as a visitor into the best sitting-room. Maurice remained 
standing, in prescribed fashion. But he had no sooner crossed 
the threshold than he was aware of loud voices in the adjoin- 
ing room, separated from the one he was in by large folding- 
doors. 

“ If you think,” said a woman’s voice, and broke on “ think ” 
— “ if you think I’m going to endure a repetition of what hap- 
pened two years ago, you’re mistaken. Never again shall she 
enter this house! Oh, you pig, you wretch! Klara has told 
me; she saw you through the keyhole — with your arm round 
her waist. And I know myself, scarcely a note was struck in 
the hour. You have her here on any pretext; you keep her in 
the class after all the others have gone. But this time I’m not 
going to sit still till the scandal comes out, and she has to leave 


432 MAURICE GUEST 

the place. A man of your age ! — the father of four children ! — 
and this ugly little hussy of seventeen! Was there ever such 
a miserable woman as I am! No, she shall never enter this 
house again/* 

“ And I say she shall ! ** came from Schwarz so fiercely that 
the listener started. “ Aren’t you ashamed, woman, at your 
age, to set a servant spying at keyholes? — or, what is more 
likely, spying yourself? Keep to your kitchen and your pots, 
and don’t dictate to me. I am the master of the house.” 
i “ Not in a case like this. It concerns me. It concerns the 
children. I say she shall never enter the door again.” 

“ And I say she shall. Go out of the room! ” 

A chair grated roughly on a bare floor; a door banged with 
such violence that every other door in the house vibrated. 

In the silence that ensued, Maurice endeavoured to make his 
presence known by walking about. But no one came. His. 
eyes ranged round the room. It was, with a few slight 
differences, the ordinary best room of the ordinary German 
house. The windows were heavily curtained, and, in front 
of them, to the further exclusion of light and air, stood re- 
spectively a flower-table, laden with unlovely green plants, 
and a room-aquarium. The plush furniture was stiffly grouped 
round an oblong table and dotted with crochet-covers; under a 
glass shade was a massy bunch of wax flowers ; a vertikow, dec- 
orated with shells and grasses, stood cornerwise beside the sofa ; 
and, at the door, rose white and gaunt a monumental Berlin 
stove. But, in addition to this, which was de rigueur , there 
were personal touches: on the walls, besides the usual group of 
family photographs, in oval frames, hung the copy of a Ma- 
donna by Gabriel Max, two etchings after Defregger, several 
large group-photographs of Schwarz’s classes in different years, 
a framed concert programme, yellow with age, and a silhouette 
of Schumann. Over one of the doors hung a withered laurel- 
wreath of imposing dimensions, and with faded silken ends, 
on which the inscription was still legible: Dem grossen 
Kunstler, Johannes Schwarz ! — Open on a chair, with an em- 
broidered book-marker between its pages, lay Atta Troll; and 
by the stove, a battered wooden doll sat against the wall, in 
a relaxed attitude, with a set leer on its painted face. 

Maurice waited, in growing embarrassment. He had un- 
consciously fixed his eyes on the doll ; and, in the dead silence 
of the house, the senseless face of the creature ruffled his nerves; 
crossing the room, he knocked it over with his foot, so that its 


MAURICE GUEST 


433 


head fell with a bump on the parquet floor, where it lay in a 
still more tipsy position. There was no doubt that he had ar- 
rived at a most inopportune moment; it seemed, too, as if the 
servant had forgotten even to announce him. 

On cautiously opening the door, with the idea of slipping 
away, he heard a child screaming in a distant room, and the 
mother’s voice sharp in rebuke. The servant was clattering 
pots and pans in the kitchen, but she heard Maurice, and put 
her head out of the door. Her face was red and swollen with 
crying. 

“ What! — you still here?” she said rudely. “ I’d forgotten 
all about you.” 

“ It doesn’t matter — another time,” murmured Maurice. 

But the girl had spoken in a loud voice to make herself 
heard above the screaming, which was increasing in volume, 
and, at her words, a door at the end of the passage, and facing 
down it, was opened by about an inch, and Frau Schwarz 
peered through the slit. 

“ Who is it?” 

The servant tossed her head, and made no reply. She went 
back into her kitchen, and, after a brief absence, during which 
Frau Schwarz continued surreptitiously to scrutinise Maurice, 
came out carrying a large plateful of Berliner Pfannkuchen. 
With these she crossed to an opposite room, and, as she there 
planked the plate down on the table, she announced the visitor. 
A surly voice muttered something in reply. As, however, the 
girl insisted in her sulky way, on the length of time the young 
man had waited, Schwarz called out stridently: “Well, then, 
in God’s name, let him come in ! And Klara, you tell my wife, 
if that noise isn’t stopped, I’ll throw either her or you down- 
stairs.” 

Klara appeared again, scarlet with anger, jerked her arm 
at Maurice, to signify that he might do the rest for himself, 
and, retreating into her kitchen, slammed the door. Left thus, 
with no alternative, Maurice drew his heels together, gave 
the customary rap, and went into the room. 

Schwarz was sitting at the table with his head on his hand, 
tracing the pattern of the cloth with the blade of his knife. A 
coffee-service stood on a tray before him; he had just refilled 
his cup, and helped himself from the dish of Pfannkuchen, 
which, freshly baked, sent an inviting odour through the room. 
He hardly looked up on Maurice’s entrance, and cut short the 
young man’s apologetic beginnings. 


434 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Well, what is it? What brings you here? ” 

As Maurice hesitated before the difficulty of plunging off- 
hand into the object of his visit, Schwarz pointed with his 
knife at a chair: he could not speak, for he had just put the 
best part of a Pfannkuchen in his mouth, and was chewing 
hard. Maurice sat down, and holding his hat by the brim, 
proceeded to explain that he had called on a small personal 
matter, which would not occupy more than a minute of the 
master’s time. 

“ It’s in connection with last night that I wished to speak 
to you, Herr Professor,” he said: the title, which was not 
Schwarz’s by right, he knew to be a sop. “ I should be much 
obliged to you if you would give me your candid opinion of my 
playing. It’s not easy to judge oneself — although I must say, 
both at the time, and afterwards, I was not too well pleased 
with what I had done — that is to say . . .” 

" Wief Was ? " cried Schwarz, and threw a hasty glance 
at his pupil, while he helped himself anew from the dish. 

Maurice uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again, the same 
one up. 

“ My time here comes to an end at Easter, Herr Professor. 
And it’s important for me to learn what you think of the pro- 
gress I have made since being with you. I don’t know why,” he 
added less surely, “ but of late I haven’t felt satisfied with my- 
self. I seem to have got a certain length and to have stuck 
there. I should like to know if you have noticed it, too. If 
so, does the fault lie with my want of talent, or ” 

“ Or with me, perhaps? ” broke in Schwarz, who had with 
difficulty thus far restrained himself. He laughed offensively. 
“With me — eh?” He struck himself on the chest, several 
times in succession, with the butt-end of his knife, that there 
might be no doubt to whom he referred. “ Upon my soul, 
what next I wonder! — what next!” He ceased to laugh, and 
grew ungovernably angry. “ What the devil do you mean by 
it? Do you think I’ve nothing better to do, at the end of a 
hard day’s work, than to sit here and give candid opinions, 
and discuss the progress made by each strummer who comes to 
me twice a week for a lesson ? Oho, if you are of that opinion, 
you may disabuse your mind of it! I’m at your service on 
Tuesday and Friday afternoon, when I am paid to be; other- 
wise, my time is my own.” 

He laid two of the cakes on top of each other, sliced them 
through, and put one of the pieces thus obtained in his mouth. 


MAURICE GUEST 43^ 

Maurice had risen, and stood waiting for the breathing-space 
into which he could thrust words of apology. 

“ I beg your pardon, Herr Professor,” he now began. “ You 
misunderstand me. Nothing was further from my mind 
than ” 

But Schwarz had not finished speaking; he rapped the table 
with his knife-handle, and, working himself up to a white heat, 
continued: “But plain and plump, I’ll tell you this, Herr 
Guest ” — he pronounced it “ Gwest.” “ If you are not satis- 
fied with me, and my teaching, you’re at liberty to try some one 
else. If this is a preliminary to inscribing yourself under that 
miserable humbug, that wretched charlatan, who pretends to 
teach the piano, do it, and have done with it! No one will 
hinder you — certainly not I. You’re under no necessity to 
come here beforehand, and apologise, and give your reasons — 
none of the others did. Slink off like them, without a word ! — 
it’s the more decent way in the long run. They at least knew 
they were behaving like blackguards.” 

“You have completely misunderstood me, Herr Schwarz. 
If you will give me a moment to explain ” 

But Schwarz was in no mood for explanations; he went on 
again, paying no heed to Maurice’s interruption. 

“ Who wouldn’t rather break stones by the roadside than be 
a teacher? ” he asked, and sliced and ate, sliced and ate. “ Look 
at the years of labour I have behind me — twenty and more ! — in 
which I’ve toiled to the best of my ability, eight and nine 
hours, day after day, and eternally for ends that weren’t my 
own! — And what return do I get for it? A new-comer only 
needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush 
blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt? — bah! Who was Liszt? 
A barrel-organ of execution ; a perverter of taste ; a worthy ally 
of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don’t 
talk to me of Liszt ! ” 

He spoke in spurts, blusteringly, but indistinctly, owing to 
the fullness of his mouth. 

“ But I’m not to be imposed on. I know their tricks. 
Haven’t I myself had pupils turn to me from Biilow and 
Rubinstein? Is that not proof enough? Would they have 
come if they hadn’t known what my method was worth? And 
I took them, and spared no pains to make something of them. 
Haven’t I a right to expect some gratitude from them in 
return? — Gratitude? Such a thing doesn’t exist; it’s a word 
without meaning, a puffing of the air. Look at him for 


MAURICE GUEST 


436 

whom I did more than for all the rest. Did I take a pfennig 
from him in payment? — when I saw that he had talent? Not 
I ! And I did it all. When he came to me, he couldn’t play a 
scale. I gave him extra lessons without charge, I put pupils 
in his way, I got him scholarships, I enabled him to support 
his family — they would have been beggars in the street, but 
for me. And now soon will be! Yes, I have had his mother 
here, weeping at my feet, imploring me to reason with him and 
bring him back to his senses. She sees where his infamy will 
land them. But I? I snap my fingers in h;s face. He has 
sown, and he shall reap his sowing. — But the day will come, 
I know it, when he will return to me, and all the rest will 
follow him, like the sheep they are. Let them come! They’ll 
see then whether I have need of them or not. They’ll see then 
what they were worth to me. For I can produce others — 
others, I say! — who will put him and his fellows out of the 
running. Do they think I’m done for, because of this? I’ll 
show them the contrary. I’ll show them! Why, I set no more 
store by the lot of you than I do by this plate of cakes! ” 

Again he ate voraciously, and for a few moments, the noise 
his jaws made in working was the only sound in the room. 
Maurice stood in the same attitude, with his hat in his hand. 

“ I regret more than I can express, having been the cause of 
annoying you, Herr Professor,” he said at length with stiff 
formality. “ But I should like to repeat, once more, that my 
only object in coming here was to speak to you about last night. 
I felt dissatisfied with myself and . . .” 

“ Dissatisfied?” echoed Schwarz, bringing his jaws together 
with a snap. “ And what business of yours is it to feel dissatis- 
fied, I’d like to know? Leave that to me! You’ll hear soon 
enough, I warrant you, when I have reason to be dissatisfied. 
Until then, do me the pleasure of minding your own business.” 

“ Excuse me,” said Maurice with warmth, “ if this isn’t my 
own business! ... As I see it, it’s nobody’s but mine. And 
it seemed to me natural to appeal to you, as the only per- 
son who could decide for me whether I should have anything 
further to do with art, or whether I should throw it up al- 
together.” 

Schwarz, who was sometimes not averse to a spirited op- 
position, caught at the one unlucky word on which he could 
hang his scorn. 

“Art!” he repeated with jocose emphasis — he had finished 
the plate of cakes, risen from the table, and was picking his 


MAURICE GUEST 


437 

teeth at the window. “Art! — pooh, pooh! — what’s art got to 
do with it? In your place, I should avoid taking such high- 
flown words on my tongue. Call it something else. Do you 
think it makes a jot of difference whether you call it art 
or . . . pludderdump? Not so much” — and he snapped his 
fingers — “ will be changed, though you never call it any- 
thing! Vanity ! — it’s nothing but vanity! A set of raw youths 
inflate themselves like frogs, and have opinions on art, as on 
what they have eaten for their dinner. — Do your work and 
hold your tongue ! A scale well played is worth all the words 
that were ever said — and that, the majority of you can’t do.” 

He closed his tootpick with a snap, spat dexterously at a 
spittoon which stood in a corner of the room, and the inter- 
view was over. 

As Maurice descended the spiral stair, he said to himself 
that, no matter how long he remained in Leipzig, he would 
never trouble Schwarz with his presence again. The man was 
a loose-mouthed bully. But in future he might seek out others 
to be the butt of his clumsy wit. He, Maurice, was too good 
for that. — And squaring his shoulders, he walked erectly down 
the street, and across the Johannapark. 

But none the less, he did not go straight home. For, 
below the comedy of intolerance at which he was playing, 
lurked, as he well knew, the consciousness that his true impres- 
sion of the past hour had still to be faced. He might post- 
pone doing this; he could not shirk it. It was all very well: 
he might repeat to himself that he had happened on Schwarz 
at an inopportune moment. That did not count. For him, 
Maurice, the opportune moment simply did not exist; he was 
one of those people who are always inopportune, come and go 
as they will. He might have waited for days; he would never 
have caught Schwarz in the right mood, or in the nick of time. 
How he envied those fortunate mortals who always arrived 
at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing! 
That talent had never been his. With him it was a perpetual 
blunder. 

One thing, though, that still perplexed him, was that not 
once, since he had been in Leipzig, had he caught a glimpse of 
that native goodness of heart, for which he had heard Schwarz 
lauded. The master had done his duty by him — nothing more. 
Neither had had any personal feeling for the other; and the 
words Schwarz had used this afternoon had only been the 
outcome of a long period of reserve, even of distrust. At this 


MAURICE GUEST 


438 

moment, when he was inclined to take the onus of the mis- 
understanding on his own shoulders, Maurice admitted, be- 
sides his constant preoccupation — or possibly just because of 
it — an innate lack of sympathy in himself, an inability, either 
of heart or of imagination, to project himself into the lives and 
feelings of people he did not greatly care for. Otherwise, he 
would not have gone to Schwarz on such an errand as to- 
day’s; he would have remembered that the master was likely 
to be sore and suspicious. And, from now on, things would be 
worse instead of better. Schwarz had no doubt been left under 
the impression that Maurice had wished to complain of his 
teaching; and impressions of this nature were difficult to erase. 

There was nothing to be done, however, but to plod along 
in the familiar rut. He must stomach aspersions and injuries, 
behave as if nothing had happened. His first hot intention of 
turning his back on Schwarz soon yielded to more worldly-wise 
thoughts. Every practical consideration was against it. He 
might avenge himself, if he liked, by running to the rival teacher 
like a crossed child; Schrievers would undoubtedly receive him 
with open arms, and promise him all he asked. But what could 
he hope to accomplish, under a complete change of method, in 
the few months that were left? He would also have to forfeit 
his fees for the coming term, which were already paid. Schrie- 
vers’ lessons were expensive, and out of the small sum that re- 
mained to him to live on, it would be impossible to take more 
than half a dozen. Another than he might have appealed to 
Schrievers’ satisfaction in securing a fresh convert; but Mau- 
rice had learnt too thoroughly by now, that he was not one of 
those happy exceptions — exceptions by reason of their talent or 
their temperament — to whom a master was willing to devote 
his time free of charge. 

Over these reflections night had fallen ; and rising, he walked 
speedily back by the dark wood-paths. But before he reached 
the meadows, from which he could see lights blinking in the 
scattered villas, his steps had lagged again. His discourage- 
ment had nothing chimerical in it at this moment; it was part 
and parcel of himself. — The night was both chilly and misty, 
and it was late. But a painful impression of the previous 
evening lingered in his mind. Louise would be annoyed with 
him for keeping her waiting; and he shrank, in advance, from 
the thought of another disagreeable scene. He was not in the 
mood to-night, to soothe and console. 

As he entered the Mozartstrasse , he saw that there was a light 


MAURICE GUEST 


439 


in Madeleine’s window. She was at home, then. He imagined 
her sitting quiet and busy in her pleasant room, which, except 
for the ring of lamplight, was sunk in peaceful shadow. This 
was what he needed : an hour’s rest, dim light, and Madeleine’s 
sympathetic tact. 

Without giving himself time for thought, he mounted the 
stair and pressed the bell-knob on the third floor. 

On seeing who her visitor was, Madeleine rose with alacrity 
from the writing-table. 

“ Maurice! Is it really you? ” 

“ I was passing. I thought I would run up . . . you’re sur- 
prised to see me ? ” 

“ Oh, well — you’re a stranger now, you know.” 

She was vexed with herself for showing astonishment. Mov- 
ing some books, she made room for him to sit down on the sofa, 
and, as he was moody, and seemed in no hurry to state why he 
had come, she asked if she might finish the letter she was 
writing. 

“ Make yourself comfortable. Here’s a cushion for your 
head.” 

Through half-closed eyes, he watched her hand travelling 
across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular in- 
tervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was 
no sound except the gentle scratching of her pen. 

Madeleine did not look up till she had finished her letter 
and addressed the envelope. Maurice had shut his eyes. 

“ Are you asleep? ” she roused him. “ Or only tired? ” 

“ I’ve a headache.” 

“ I’ll make you some tea.” 

He watched her preparing it, and, by the time she handed 
him his cup, he was in the right mood for making her his 
confidant. 

“ Look here, Madeleine,” he said ; “ I came up to-night — 
The fact is, I’ve done a foolish thing. And I want to talk to 
some one about it.” 

Her eyes grew more alert. 

“ Let me see if I can help you.” 

He shook his head. “ I’m afraid you can’t. But first of all, 
tell me frankly, how you thought I got on last night.” 

“How you got on?” echoed Madeleine, unclear what this 
was to lead to. “ Why, all right, of course. — Oh, well, if you 
insist on the truth! — The fact is, Maurice, you did no better 
and no worse than the majority of those who fill the Abend 


440 


MAURICE GUEST 


programmes. What you didn’t do, was to reach the standard 
your friends had set up for you.” 

“ Thanks. Now listen,” and he related to her in detail his 
misadventure of the afternoon. 

Madeleine followed with close attention. But more dis- 
tinctly than what he said, she heard what he did not say. His 
account of the two last days, with the unintentional sidelight it 
threw on just those parts he wished to keep in darkness, made 
her aware how complicated and involved his life had become. 
But before he finished speaking, she brought all her practical 
intelligence to bear on what he said. 

“Maurice!” she exclaimed, with a consternation that was 
three parts genuine. “ I should like to shake you. How could 
you! — what induced you to do such a foolish thing?” And, 
as he did not speak: “ If only you had come to me before, in- 
stead of after! I should have said: hold what ridiculous opin- 
ions you like yourself, but for goodness’ sake keep clear of 
Schwarz with them. Yes, ridiculous, and offensive, too. Any- 
one would have taken your talk about being dissatisfied just 
as he did. And after the way he has been treated of late, he’s 
of course doubly touchy.” 

“ I knew that, when it was too late. But I meant merely to 
speak straight out to him, Madeleine — one man to another. 
You surely don’t want to say he’s incapable of allowing one to 
have an independent opinion? If that’s the case, then he’s 
nothing but the wretched little tyrant Heinz declares him 
to be.” 

“ Wait till you have taught as long as he has,” said Made- 
leine, and, at his muttered: “ God forbid! ” she continued with 
more warmth: “You’ll know then, too, that it doesn’t matter 
whether your pupils have opinions or not. He has seen this 
kind of thing scores of times before, and knows it must be 
kept down.” 

She paused, and looked at him. “ To get on in life, one must 
have a certain amount of tact. You are too naive, Maurice, too 
unsuspecting — one of those people who would like to carry on 
social intercourse on a basis of absolute truth, and then be 
surprised that it came to an end. You are altogether a 
very difficult person to deal with. You are either too candid, 
or too reserved. There’s no middle way in you. I haven’t the 
least doubt that Schwarz finds you both perplexing and irritat- 
ing; he takes the candour for impertinence, and the reserve for 
distrust.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


441 


Maurice smiled faintly. “ Go on — don’t spare me. No one 
ever troubled before to tell me my failings.” 

“ Oh, I’m quite in earnest. As I look at it, it’s entirely your 
own fault that you don’t stand better with Schwarz. You 
have never condescended to humour him, as you ought to have 
done. You thought it was enough to be truthful and honest, 
and to leave the rest to him. Well, it wasn’t. I won’t hear 
a word against Schwarz; he’s goodness itself to those who de- 
serve it. A little bluff and rude at times; but he’s too busy to 
go about in kid gloves for fear of hurting sensitive people’s 
feelings.” 

“ Why did you never take private lessons from him? ” was 
her next question. “ I told you months ago, you remember, 
that you ought to. — Oh, yes, you said they were too expensive, 
I know, but you could have scraped a few marks together some- 
how. You managed to buy books, and books were quite unneces- 
sary. One lesson a fortnight would have brought you more 
into touch with Schwarz than all you have had in the class. 
As it is, you don’t know him any better than he knows you.” 
And as she refilled his tea-cup, she added: “You quoted Heinz 
to me just now. But you and I can’t afford to measure peo- 
ple by the same standards as Heinz. We are everyday mortals, 
remember. — Besides, in all that counts, he is not worth 
Schwarz’s little finger.” 

“ You’re a warm advocate, Madeleine.” 

“Yes, and I’ve reason to be. No one here has been as kind 
to me as Schwarz. I came, a complete stranger, and with not 
more than ordinary talent. But I went to him, and told him 
frankly what I wanted to do, how long I could stay, and 
how much money I had to spend. He helped me and advised 
me. He has let me study what will be of most use to me after- 
wards, and he takes as much interest in my future as I do my- 
self. How can I speak anything but well of him? — What I 
certainly didn’t do, was to go to him and talk ambiguously about 
feeling dissatisfied with him . . .” 

“With myself, Madeleine. Haven’t I made that clear?” 

But Madeleine only sniffed. 

“ Well, it’s over and done with now,” she said after a pause. 
“And talking about it won’t mend it. — Tell me, rather, what 
you intend to do. What are your plans ? ” 

“ Plans? I don’t know. I haven’t any. Sufficient unto the 
day, etc.” 

But of this she disapproved with open scorn. “ Rubbish ! 


442 


MAURICE GUEST 


When your time here is all but up! And no plans! — One 
thing, I can tell you anyhow, is, after to-day you needn’t rely 
on Schwarz for assistance. You’ve spoilt your chances with 
him. The only way of repairing the mischief would be the les- 
son I spoke of — one a week as long as you’re here.” 

“ I couldn’t afford it.” 

“ No, I suppose not,” she said sarcastically, and tore a piece 
of paper that came under her fingers into narrow strips. “ Tell 
me,” she added a moment later, in a changed tone : “ where do 
you intend to settle when you return to England? And have 
you begun to think of advertising yourself yet ? ” 

He waved his hand before his face as if he were chasing away 
a fly. “For God’s sake, Madeleine! . . . these alluring 
prospects ! ” 

“ Pray, what else do you expect to do? ” 

“Well, the truth is, I . . . I’m not going back to England 
at all. I mean to settle here.” 

Madeleine repressed the exclamation that rose to her lips, 
and stooped to brush something off the skirt of her dress. Her 
face was red when she raised it. She needed no further telling ; 
she understood what his words implied as clearly as though it 
were printed black on white before her. But she spoke in a 
casual tone. “ However are you going to make that possible ? ” 

He endeavoured to explain. 

“ I don’t envy you,” she said drily, when he had finished. 
“ You hardly realise what lies before you, I think. There are 
people here who are glad to get fifty pfennigs an hour, for 
piano lessons. Think of plodding up and down stairs, all day 
long, for fifty pfennigs an hour! ” 

He was silent. 

“ While in England, with a little tact and patience, you 
would soon have more pupils than you could take at five shil- 
lings.” 

“ Tact and patience mean push and a thick skin. But don’t 
worry ! I shall get on all right. And if I don’t — life’s short, 
you know.” 

“ But you are just at the beginning of it — and ridiculously 
young at that! Good Heavens, Maurice!” she burst out, un- 
able to contain herself. “ Can’t you see that after you’ve been 
at home again for a little while, things that have seemed so 
important here will have shrunk into their right places? You’ll 
be glad to have done with them then, when you are in orderly 
circumstances again.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


443 

“ I’m afraid not,” answered the young man. “ I’m not a 
good forgetter.” 

“A good forgetter!” repeated Madeleine, and laughed sar- 
castically. She was going on to say more, but, just at this 
moment, a clock outside struck ten, and Maurice sprang to his 
feet. 

“ So late already? I’d no idea. I must be off.” 

She stood by, and watched him look for his hat. 

“ Here it is.” She picked it up, and handed it to him, with 
an emphasised want of haste. 

“ Good night, Madeleine. Thanks for the truth. I knew I 
could depend on you.” 

“ It was well meant. And the truth is always beneficial, 
you know. Good night. — Come again, soon.” 

He heard her last words half-way down the stairs, which he 
took two at a time. 

The hour he had now to face was a painful ending to an 
unpleasant day. It was not merely the fact that he had kept 
Louise waiting, in aching suspense, for several hours. It now 
came out that, after their disagreement of the previous night, 
she had confidently expected him to return to her early in the 
day, had expected contrition and atonement. That he had not 
even suspected this made her doubly bitter against him. In 
vain he tried to excuse himself, to offer explanations. She 
would not listen to him, nor would she let him touch her. 
She tore her dress from between his fingers, brushed his hand 
off her arm; and, retreating into a corner of the room, where 
she stood like an animal at bay, she poured out over him her 
accumulated resentment. All she had ever suffered at his hands, 
all the infinitesimal differences there had been between them, 
from the beginning, the fine points in which he had failed — 
things of which he had no knowledge — all these were raked up 
and cast at him till, numb with pain, he lost even the wish to 
comfort her. Sitting down at the table, he laid his head on his 
folded arms. 

At his feet were the fragments of the little clock, which, in 
her anger at his desertion of her, she had trodden to pieces. 


VI 


Their first business the next morning was to buy another 
clock. By daylight, Louise was full of remorse at what she 
had done, and in passing the writing-table, averted her eyes. 
They went out early to a shop in the Grimmaischestrasse ; and 
Maurice stood by and watched her make her choice. 

She loved to buy, and entered into the purchase with leisurely 
enjoyment. The shopman and his assistant spared themselves 
no trouble in fetching and setting out their wares. Louise 
handled each clock as it was put before her, discussed the merits 
of different styles, and a faint colour mounted to her cheeks 
over the difficulty of deciding between two which she liked 
equally well. She had pushed up her veil; it swathed her 
forehead like an Eastern woman’s. Her eagerness, which was 
expressed in a slight unsteadiness of nostril and lip, would 
have had something childish in it, had it not been for her eyes. 
They remained heavy and unsmiling; and the disquieting half- 
rings below them were more bluely brown than ever. Leaning 
sideways against the counter, Maurice looked away from them 
to her hands; her fingers were entirely without ornament, and 
he would have liked to load them with rings. As it was, he 
could not even pay for the clock she chose; it cost more than 
he had to spend in a month. 

In the street again, she said she was hungry, and, glad to 
be able to add his mite to her pleasure, he took her by the 
arm and steered her to the Cafe Franqais, where they had 
coffee and ices. The church-steeples were booming eleven when 
they emerged; it did not seem worth while going home and 
settling down to work. Instead, they went to the Rosental. 

It was a brilliant autumn day, rich in light and shade, and 
there was only a breath abroad of the racy freshness that meant 
subsequent decay. The leaves were turning red and orange, but 
had not begun to fall; the sky was deeply blue; outlines were 
sharp and precise. They were both in a mood this morning 
to be susceptible to their surroundings; they were even eager 
to be affected by them, and made happy. The disagreements 
of the two preceding nights were like bad dreams, which they 

444 


MAURICE GUEST 


445 

were anxious to forget, or at least to avoid thinking of. Her 
painful, unreasonable treatment of him, the evening before, had 
not been touched on between them ; after his incoherent attempts 
to justify himself, after his bitter self-reproaches, when she lay 
sobbing in his arms, they had both, with one accord, been silent. 
Neither of them felt any desire for open-hearted explanations; 
they were careful not to stir up the depths anew. Louise was 
very quiet ; had it not been for her eyes, he might have believed 
her happy. But here, just as an hour before in the watchmaker’s 
shop, they brooded, unable to forget. And yet there was a 
pliancy about her this morning, a readiness to meet his wishes, 
which, as he walked at her side, made him almost content. The 
old, foolish dreams awoke in him again, and vistas opened, of a 
gentle comradeship, which might still come true, when the 
strenuous side of her love for him had worn itself out. If ooly 
an hour like the present could have lasted indefinitely! 

It was a happy morning. They ended it with an improvised 
lunch at the Kaiserpark; and it remained imprinted on their 
minds as an unexpected patch of colour, in an unending row 
of grey days, given up to duty. 

The next one, and the next again, Louise continued in the 
same yielding mood, which was wholly different from the 
emotional expansiveness of the past weeks. Maurice took a 
glad advantage of her willingness to please him, and they had 
several pleasant walks together: to Napoleon’s battlefields; 
along the Griine Gasse and the Poetenweg to Schiller’s hoiase 
at Gohlis; and into the heart of the Rosental — das wilde R&s- 
ental — where it was very solitary, and where the great tnees i 
seemed to stagger under their load of stained leaves. 

A burst of almost July radiance occurred at this time; 22id 
one day, Louise expressed a wish to go to the country, an 
order that, by once more being together for a whole day <on 
end, they might relive in fancy the happy weeks they bad 
spent on the Rochlitzer Berg. It was never her way to UTTge 
over-much, which made it hard to refuse her ; so it was arrangged 
that they should set off betimes the following Saturday. 

Maurice had his reward in the cry of pleasure she gswe 
w'hen he wakened her to tell her that it was a fine day. 

“ Get up, dear! It’s less than an hour till the train goes.” 

For the first time for weeks, Louise was her impetuous seslf 
again. She threw things topsy-turvy in the room. It w.-as 
he who drew her attention to an unfastened hook, and sn 
unbound ribbon. She only pressed forward. 







446 MAURICE GUEST 

M Make haste ! — oh, make haste ! We shall be late.” 

An overpowering smell of newly-baked rolls issued from the 
bakers* shops, and the errand-boys were starting out with their 
baskets. Women and house-porters were coming out to wash 
pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was 
waking up to another uneventful day ; but they two were hasten- 
ing off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by 
the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty ; were setting 
out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange 
places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In 
the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the market- 
women, who were journeying from one village to another. These 
sat with their wizened hands clasped on their high stomachs, or 
on the handles of their baskets, and stared, like stupid, placid 
animals, at the strange young foreign couple before them. 
Partly for the frolic of astonishing them, and also because he 
was happy at seeing Louise so happy, Maurice kissed her hand ; 
but it was she who astonished them most. When she gave 
a cry, or used her hands with a sudden, vivid effect, or flashed 
her white teeth in a smile, every head in the carriage was turned 
towards her; and when, in addition, she was overtaken by a fit 
of loquacity, she was well-nigh devoured by eyes. 

They did not travel as far as they had intended. From the 
carriage window, she saw T a wayside place that took her fancy. 

“ Here, Maurice; let us get out here.” 

Having breakfasted, and left their bags at an inn, they strayed 
at random along an inviting road lined with apple-trees. When 
Louise grew tired, they rested in the arbour of a primitive 
Gasthaus, and ate their midday meal. Afterwards, in a wood, 
he spread a rug for her, and she lay in a nest of sun-spots. Only 
their own voices broke the silence. Then she fell asleep, and, 
until she opened her eyes again, and called to him in surprise, 
no sound w^as to be heard but the sudden, crisp rustling of some 
bird or insect. When evening fell, they returned to their lodg- 
ing, ate their supper in the smoky public room — for, outside, 
mists had risen — and then before them stretched, undisturbed, 
the long evening and the longer night, to be spent in a strange 
room, of which they had hitherto not suspected the existence, 
but which, from now on, would be indissolubly bound up with 
their other memories. 

The first day passed in such a manner w T as as flawless as any 
they had knowrn in the height of summer — with all the added 
attractions of closer intimacy. In its course, the shadows lifted 


MAURICE GUEST 


447 

from her eyes; and Maurice ceased to remember that he had 
made a mess of his affairs. But the very next one failed — as 
far as Louise was concerned — to reach the same level: it was 
like a flower ever so slightly overblown. The lyric charms that 
had so pleased her — the dewy freshness of the morning, the 
solitude, the unbroken sunshine — were frail things, and, 
snatched with too eager a hand, crumbled beneath the touch. 
They were not made to stand the wear and tear of repetition. 
It was also impossible, she found, to live through again days 
such as they had spent at Rochlitz; time past was past irrevoc- * 
ably, with all that belonged to it. And it was further, a mistake 
to believe that a more intimate acquaintance meant a keener 
pleasure; it was just the stimulus of strangeness, the piquancy 
of feeling one’s way, that had made up half the fascination of 
the summer. 

With sure instinct, Louise recognised this, even while she 
exclaimed with delight. And her heart sank: not until this 
moment had she known how high her hopes had been, how 
firmly she had pinned her faith upon the revival of passion 
which these days were to bring to pass. The knowledge that 
this had been a delusion, was hard to bear. In thought, she was 
merciless to herself, when, on waking, the second morning, she 
looked with unexpectant eyes over the day that lay before her. 
Could nothing satisfy her, she asked herself? Could she not 
be content for twenty-four hours on end? Was it eternally 
her lot to come to the end of things, before they had properly 
begun? It seemed, always, as if she alone must be pressing 
forward, without rest. Here, on the second of these days of 
love and sunshine, she saw, with absolute clearness, that neither 
this nor any other day had anything extraordinary to give her; 
and sitting silent at dinner, under an arbour of highly-coloured 
creeper, she was overcome by such a laming discouragement, that 
she laid her knife and fork down, and could eat no more. 

Maurice, watching her across the table, believed that she was 
over-tired, and filled up her glass with wine. 

But she did not yield without a struggle. And it was not 
merely rebellion against the defects of her own nature, which 
prompted her. The prospect of the coming months filled her 
with dismay. When this last brief spell of pleasure was 
over, there was nothing left, to which she could look for- 
ward. The approaching winter stretched before her like a star- 
less night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. What 
was she to do? — what was to become of her, when the short 


MAURICE GUEST 


448 

dark days came down again, and shut her in? The thought 
of it almost drove her mad. Desperate with fear, she shut her 
eyes and went blindly forward, determined to extract every 
particle of pleasure, or, at least, of oblivion, that the present 
offered. 

Under these circumstances, the poor human element in their 
relations became once again, and more than ever before, the 
pivot on which their lives turned. Louise aimed deliberately at 
bringing this about. Further, she did what she had never yet 
done: she brought to bear on their intercourse all her own hard- 
won knowledge, and all her arts. She drew from her store of 
experience those trifling, yet weighty details, which, once she 
has learned them, a woman never forgets. And, in addition 
to this, she took advantage of the circumstances in which they 
found themselves, utilising to the full the stimulus of strange 
times and places: she fired the excitement that lurked in sur- 
reptitious embrace and surrender, under all the dangers of a 
possible surprise. She was perverse and capricious; she would 
turn away from him till she reduced him to despair; then to 
yield suddenly, with a completeness that threatened to undo 
them both. Her devices were never-ending. Not that they 
were necessary: for he was helpless in her hands when she 
assumed the mastery. But she could not afford to omit one 
of the means to her end, for she had herself to lash as well 
as him. And so, once more, as at the very beginning, hand grew 
to be a weight in hand, something alive, electric ; and any chance 
contact might rouse a blast in them. She neither asked nor 
showed mercy. Drop by drop, they drained each other of 
vitality, tw r o sufferers, yet each thirsty for the others life-blood ; 
for, with this new attitude on her part, an element of cruelty 
had entered into their love. When, with her hands on his 
shoulders, her insatiable lips apart, Louise put back her head 
and looked at him, Maurice was acutely aware of the hostile 
feeling in her. But he, too, knew what it was; for, when he 
tried to urge prudence on her, she only laughed at him; and 
this low, reckless laugh, her savage eyes, and morbid pallor, in- 
variably took from him every jot of concern. 

They returned to Leipzig towards the middle of the first 
week, in order not to make their absence too conspicuous. But 
they had arranged to go away again, on the following Saturday, 
and, in the present state of things, the few intervening days 
seemed endless. Louise shut herself up, and would see little 
of him. 


MAURICE GUEST 


449 


The next week, and the next again, were spent in the same 
fashion. A fine and mild October ran its course. For the 
fourth journey, towards the end of the month, they had planned 
to return to Rochlitz. At the last moment, however, Maurice 
opposed the scheme, and they left the train at Grimma. It was 
Friday, and a superb autumn day. They put up, not in the 
town itself, but at an inn about a mile and a half distant from 
it. This stood on the edge of a wood, was a favourite summer 
resort, and had lately been enlarged by an additional wing. 
Now, it was empty of guests save themselves. They occupied 
a large room in the new part of the building, at the end of a 
long corridor, which was shut off by a door from the rest of 
the house. They were utterly alone; there was no need for 
them even to moderate their voices. In the early morning 
hours, and on the journey there, Maurice had thought he no- 
ticed something unusual about Louise, and, more than once, he 
had asked her if her head ached. But soon he forgot his solici- 
tude. 

Next morning, he felt an irresistible inclination to go out: 
opening the window, he leaned on the sill. A fresh, pleasant 
breeze was blowing; it bent the tops of the pines, and drove 
the white clouds smoothly over the sky. He suggested that they 
should walk to the ruined cloister of Nimbschen; but Louise 
responded very languidly, and he had to coax and persuade. By 
the time she was ready to leave the untidy room, the morning 
was more than half over, and the shifting clouds had balled 
themselves into masses. Before the two emerged from the 
wood, an even network of cloud had been drawn over the whole 
sky; it looked like rain. 

They walked as usual in silence, little or nothing being left 
to say, that seemed worth the exertion of speech. Each step 
cost Louise a visible effort; her arms hung slack at her sides; 
her very hands felt heavy. The pallor of her face had a greyish 
tinge in it. Maurice began to regret having hurried her out 
against her will. 

They were on a narrow path skirting a wood, when she 
suddenly expressed a wish for some tall bulrushes that grew 
beside a stream, some distance below. Maurice went down to 
the edge of the water and began to cut the rushes. But the 
ground was marshy, and the finest were beyond his reach. 

On the path at the top of the bank, Louise stood and 
followed his movements. She watched his ineffectual efforts 
to seize the further reeds, saw how they slipped back from be- 


450 


MAURICE GUEST 


tween his hands; she watched him take out his knife and open 
it, endeavour once more to reach those he wanted, and, still 
unsuccessful, choose a dry spot to sit down on; saw him take 
off his boots and stockings, then rise and go cautiously out on 
the soft ground. Ages seemed to pass while she watched him 
do these trivial things; she felt as if she were gradually turning 
to stone as she stood. How long he was about it! How 
deliberately he moved! And she had the odd sensation, too, 
that she knew beforehand everything he would and would not 
do, just as if she had experienced it already. His movements 
were of an impossible circumstantiality, out of all proportion 
to the trifling service she had asked of him; for, at heart, she 
cared as little about the rushes as about anything else. But it 
was an unfortunate habit of his, and one she noticed more and 
more as time went on, to make much of paltry details, which, 
properly, should have been dismissed without a second thought. 
It implied a certain tactlessness, to underline the obvious in 
this fashion. The very way, for instance, he stretched out his 
arm, unclasped his knife, leant forward, and then stooped back 
to lay the cut reeds on the bank. Oh, she was tired ! — tired to 
exasperation ! — of his ways and actions — as tired as she was 
of his words, and of the thousand and one occurrences, daily 
repeated, that made up their lives. She would have liked to 
creep away, to hide herself in an utter seclusion; while, instead, 
it was her lot to assist, hour after hour, at making much of what, 
in the depths of her soul, did not concern her at all. Nothing, 
she felt, would ever really concern her again. She gazed fixedly 
before her, at him, too, but without seeing him, till her sight 
was blurred; trees and sky, stream and rushes, swam together 
in a formless maze. And all of a sudden, while she was still 
blind, there ran through her such an intense feeling of aversion, 
such a complete satedness with all she had of late felt and 
known, that she involuntarily took a step backwards, and pressed 
her palms together, in order to hinder herself from screaming 
aloud. She could bear it no longer. In a flash, she grasped 
that she was unable, utterly unable, to face the day that was 
before her. She knew in advance every word, every look and 
embrace that it held for her: rather than undergo them afresh, 
she would throw herself into the water at her feet. Any- 
where, anywhere! — only to get away, to be alone, to cover her 
face and see no more! Her hand went to her throat; her 
breath refused to come; she shivered so violently that she was 
afraid she would fall to the ground. 


MAURICE GUEST 


45i 

Maurice, all unsuspecting, sat with his back to her, and 
laced his boots. 

But he was startled into an exclamation, when he climbed 
the bank and saw the state she was in. 

“ Louise! Good Heavens, what’s the matter? Are you ill? ” 

He took her by the arm, and shook her a little, to arrest her 
attention. 

“Maurice! . . . no!” Her voice was hoarse. “Oh, let 
me go home! ” 

He repeated the words in amazed alarm. “ But what is it, 
darling ? Are you ill ? Are you cold ? — that you’re trem- 
bling like this ? ” 

“ No . . . yes. Oh, I want to go home! — back to Leip- 
zig.” 

“ Why, of course, if you want to. At once.” 

The rushes lay forgotten on the ground. Without further 
words, they hastened to the inn. There, Maurice helped her 
to throw her things into the bag she had not wholly unpacked, 
and, having paid the bill, led her, with the same feverish haste, 
through the woods and town to the railway-station. He was 
full of distressed concern for her, but hardly dared to show it ; 
for, to all his questions, she only shook her head. Walking at 
his side, she dug her nails into her palms till she felt the blood 
come, in her effort to conceal and stifle the waves of almost 
physical repugnance that passed through her, making it im- 
possible for her to bear even the touch of his hand. In the 
train, she leaned back in the corner, and, shutting her eyes, pre- 
tended to be asleep. 

They took a droschke home; the driver whipped up his horse; 
the landlady was called in to make the first fire of the season. 
Louise went to bed at once. She wanted nothing, she said, but 
to lie still in the darkened room. He should go away; she pre- 
ferred to be alone. No, she was not ill, only tired, but so tired 
that she could not keep her eyes open. She needed rest: to- 
morrow she would be all right again. He should please, please, 
leave her, and go away. And, turning her face to the wall, 
she drew the bedclothes over her head. 

At his wits’ end to know what it all meant, Maurice com- 
plied. But at home in his room, he could settle to nothing; 
he trembled at every footstep on the stair. No message came, 
however, and when he had seen her again that evening, he felt 
more reassured. 

“ It’s nothing — really nothing. I’m only tired . . . yes, 


452 


MAURICE GUEST 


it was too much. Just let me be, Maurice — till to-moirow.” 
And she shut her eyes again, and kept them shut, till she heard 
the door close behind him. 

He was reassured, but still, for the greater part of the night, 
he lay sleepless. He was always agitated anew by the abrupt 
way in which Louise passed from mood to mood; but this was 
something different; he could not understand it. In the morn- 
ing, however, he saw things in a less tragic light; and, on 
sitting down to the piano, he experienced almost a sense of satis- 
faction at the prospect of an undisturbed day’s work. 

Meanwhile Louise shrank, even in memory, from the fever- 
ish weeks just past, as she had shrunk that day from his touch. 
And she struggled to keep her thoughts from dwelling on them. 
But it was the first time in her life that she felt a like shame 
and regret; and she could not rid her mind of the haunting 
images. She knew the reason, too ; darkness brought the 
knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, that the 
failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas 
the whole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to 
bolster up the impossible, to stave off the inevitable, to post- 
pone the end. And it had all been in vain. The end! It 
would come, as surely as day followed night — had perhaps 
indeed already come; for how else could the nervous aversion 
be explained, which had seized her that day? What, during 
the foregoing weeks, she had tried not to hear ; what had sounded 
in her ears like the tone of a sunken bell, was there at last, 
horrible and deafening. She had ceased to care for him, and 
ceased, surfeited with abundance, with the same vehement 
abruptness as she had once begun. The swiftness with which 
things had swept to a conclusion, had, confessedly, been ac- 
celerated by her unhappy temperament; but, however gentle the 
gradient, the point for which they made would have remained 
the same. What she was now forced to recognise was, that the 
whole affair had been no more than an episode; and the fact of 
its having begun less brutally than others, had not made it a 
whit better able than these to withstand decay. 

A bitter sense of humiliation came over her. What was 
she? Not a week ago — she could count the days on her fingers — 
the mere touch of his hand on her hair had made her thrill ; and 
now the sole feeling she was conscious of was one of dislike. 
She looked back over the course of her relations with him, and 
many things, unclear before, became plain to her. She had gone 
into the intimacy deliberately, with open eyes, knowing that she 


MAURICE GUEST 


453 

cared for him only in a friendly way. She had believed, then, 
that the gift of herself would mean little to her, while it would 
secure her a friend and companion. And then, too — she might 
as well be quite honest with herself — she had nourished a 
romantic hope that a love which commenced as did this shy, 
adoring tenderness, would give her something finer and more 
enduring than she had hitherto known. Wrong, all wrong, 
from beginning to end ! It had been no better than those loves 
which made no secret of their aim and did not strut about 
draped in fdse sentiment. The end of all was one and the 
same. But besides this, it had come to mean more to her than 
she had ever dreamt of allowing. You could not play with fire, 
it seemed, and not be burned. Or, at least, she could not. She 
was branded 'vith wounds. The fierce demands in her, over 
which she had no control, had once more reared their heads and 
got the master/ of her, and of him, too. There had been no 
chance, beneath their scorching breath, for a pallid delicacy of 
feeling. 

It did not cross her mind that she would conceal what she 
felt from him. Secrecy implied a mental ingenuity, a tiresome 
care of word ard deed. His eyes must be opened; he, too, 
must learn to siy the horrid word “ end.” How infinitely 
thankful she had now reason to be that she had not yielded to 
his persuasions, aid married him! No, she had never seriously 
considered the idea, even at the height of her folly. But then, 
she was never qui:e sure of herself; there was always a chance 
that some blind inpulse would spring up in her and overthrow 
her resolutions. Fow, he must suffer, too — and rightly. For, 
after all, he had also been to blame. If only he had not impor- 
tuned her so persistently, if only he had let her alone, nothing of 
this would have hajpened, and there would be no reason for her 
to lie and taunt h<rself. But, in his silent, obstinate way, he 
had given her no feace; and you could not — she could not! — 
go on living unmoved, at the side of a person who was crazy 
with love for you. 

For two nights, sle slept little. On the third, worn out, she 
fell, soon after midiight, into a deep sleep, from which, the 
following morning, ;he wakened refreshed. 

When Maurice cane, about half-past twelve, her eyes fol- 
lowed him with a nev curiosity, as he drew up a chair and sat 
down at her bedside. She wondered what he would say when 
he knew, and what clange would come over his face. But she 
made no beginning t( enlightening him. In his presence, she 


MAURICE GUEST 


454 

was seized by an ungovernable desire to be distracted, to be taken 
out of herself. Also, it was not, she began to grasp, a case 
of stating a simple fact, in simple words; it meant all the 
circumstantiality of complicated explanation; it meant a still 
more murderous tearing up of emotion. And besides this, there 
was another factor to be reckoned with, and that was the 
peculiar mood he was in. For, as soon as he entered rhe room, 
she felt that he was different from what he had been the day 
before. 

She heard the irritation in his voice, as he tried to persuade 
her to come out to dinner with him. In fancy she saw it all: 
saw them walking together to the restaurant, at a brisk pace, 
in order to waste none of his valuable time; saw dinner taken 
quickly, for the same reason; saw them parting again at the 
house-door; then herself in the room alone, straying from sofa 
to window and back again, through the long hours of the long 
afternoon. A kind of mental nausea seized her at the thought 
that the old round was to begin afresh. She brcught no answer 
over her lips. And after waiting some time in vain for her to 
speak, Maurice rose, and, still under the influence of his ill- 
humour, drew up the three blinds, and openef a window. A 
cold, dusty sunlight poured into the room. 

Louise gave a cry, and put her hands to ler eyes. 

“ The room is so close, and you’re so pale!” he said in self- 
excuse. “ Do you know you’ve been shut up* in here for three 
days now? ” 

“ My head aches.” 

“ It will never be any better as long as you (ie there. Dearest, 
what is it ? W hat’s the matter with you ? ” 

“ You’re unhappy about something,” he vent on, a moment 
later. “ What is it ? Won’t you tell me ? ” 

“ Nothing,” she murmured. She lay and pressed her palms 
to her eyeballs, so firmly that when she removed them, the 
room was a blur. Maurice, standing at jhe window, beat a 
tattoo on the pane. Then, with his back ;o her, he began to 
speak. He blamed himself for what he c^led the folly of the 
past weeks. “ I gave way when I should have been firm. 
And this is the result. You have got int> a nervous, morbid 
state. But it’s nonsense to think it can gc on.” 

For the first time, she was conscious o a somewhat critical 
attitude on his part ; he said “ folly ” aid “ nonsense.” But 
she made no comment; she lay and let hS words go over her. 
They had so little import now. All th^ words that had ever 


MAURICE GUEST 


455 

been said could not alter a jot of what she felt — of her intense 
inward experience. 

Her protracted silence, her heavy indifference infected him; 
and for some time the only sound to be heard was that of his 
fingers drumming on the glass. When he spoke again, he seemed 
to be concluding an argument with himself; and indeed, on this 
particular day, Maurice found it hard to detach his thoughts 
from himself, for any length of time. 

“ It’s no use, dear. Things can’t go on like this any longer. 
I’ve got to buckle down to work again. I’ve ... I ... I 
haven’t told you yet: Schwarz is letting me play the Men- 
delssohn.” 

She thought she would have to cry aloud ; here it was again : 
the chilling atmosphere of commonplace, which her nerves were 
expected to live and be well in; the well-worn phrases, the 
“ must this,” and “ must that,” the confident expectation of 
interest in doings that did not interest her at all. She could 
not — it would kill her to begin it anew! And, in spite of her 
efforts at repression, an exclamation forced its way through her 
lips. 

At this, the first sound she had uttered, Maurice went 
quickly back to her. 

“ Forgive me . . . talking about myself, when you are not 
well.” 

He knelt down beside the bed, and removed her hands from 
her face. She did not open her eyes, kept quite still. At this 
moment, she felt mainly curious: would the strange aversion 
to his touch return? He was kissing her palms, pressing them 
to his face. She drew a long, deep sigh: it did not come back. 
On the contrary, the touch of his hand was pleasant to her. 
He stroked her cheek, pushed back a loose piece of hair from her 
forehead ; and, as he did this, she was aware of the old sense of 
well-being. Beneath his hand, irksome thoughts fell away. 
Backwards and forwards it travelled, as gently as though she 
were a sick person. And, little by little, so gradually that, at 
first, she herself was not conscious of them, other wishes came 
to life in her again. She began to desire more than mere peace. 
The craving came over her to forget her self-torturings, and to 
forget them in a dizzy whirl. Reaching up, she put her arms 
round his neck, and drew him down. He kissed her eyelids. 
At this she opened her eyes, enveloping him in a look he had 
learnt to know well. For a second he sustained it: his life 
was concentrated in the liquid fire of these eyes, in these eager 


456 MAURICE GUEST 

parted lips. She pressed them to his, and he felt a smart, like 
a bee’s sting. 

With a jerk, he thrust her arms away, and rose to his feet; 
to keep his balance he was obliged to grasp the back of a chair. 
Taking out his handkerchief, he pressed it to his lip. 

“ Maurice!” 

“ It’s late ... I must go ... I must work, I tell you.” 
He stood staring at the drop of blood on his handkerchief. 

“ Maurice!” 

He looked round him in a confused way; he was strangely 
angry, and hasty to no purpose. “Won’t you . . . then you 
won’t come out with me ? ” 

“ Maurice ! ” The word was a cry. 

“ Oh, it’s foolish! You don’t know what you’re doing.” He 
had found his coat, and was putting it on, with unsure hands. 
“ Then, if . . . this evening, then ! As usual. I’ll come as 
usual.” 

The door shut behind him; a minute later, the street-door 
banged. At the sound Louise seemed to waken. Starting up 
in bed, she threw a wild look round the empty room; then, 
turned on her face, and bit a hole in the linen of the pillow. 

Maurice worked that afternoon as though his future was 
conditioned by the number of hours he could practise before 
evening. Throughout these three days, indeed, his zeal had 
been unabating. He would never have yielded so calmly to the 
morbid fashion in which she had cooped herself up, had not the 
knowledge that his time was his own again, been something of 
a relief to him. Yes, at first, relief was the word for what 
he felt. For, after making one good resolution on top of an- 
other, he had, when the time came, again been a willing de- 
faulter. He had allowed the chance to slip of making good, 
by redoubled diligence, his foolish mistake with regard to 
Schwarz. Now it was too late; though the master had let him 
have his way in the choice of piece for the coming Prufung , 
it had mainly been owing to indifference. If only he did not 
prove unequal to the choice now it was made! For that he was 
out of the rut of steady work, was clear to him as soon as he 
put his hands to the piano. 

But he had never been so forlornly energetic as on this par- 
ticular afternoon. Yet there was something mechanical, too, 
about his playing; neither heart nor brain was in it. Mendels- 
sohn’s effective roulades ran thoughtlessly from his fingers: in 


MAURICE GUEST 


457 

the course of a single day, he had come to feel a deep contempt 
for the emptiness of these runs and flourishes. He pressed for- 
ward, however, hour after hour without a break, as though he 
were a machine wound up for the purpose. But with the en- 
trance of dusk, his fictitious energy collapsed. He did not even 
trouble to light the lamp, but, throwing himself on the sofa, 
covered his eyes with his arm. 

The twilight induced sensations like itself — vague, formless, 
intolerable. A sudden recognition of the uselessness of human 
striving grew up in him, with the rapidity of a fungus. Effort 
and work, ambition and success, alike led nowhere, were so many 
blind alleys: ambition ended in smoke; success was a fleeing 
phantom, which one sought in vain to grasp. To the great 
mass of mankind, it was more than immaterial whether one of 
its units toiled or no; not a single soul was benefited by it. 
Most certainly not the toiler himself. It was only given to a 
few to achieve anything; the rest might stand aside early in the 
day. Nothing of their labours would remain, except the scars 
they themselves bore. 

He was unhappy; to-night he knew it with a painful clear- 
ness. The shock had been too rude. For him, change had to be 
prepared, to come gradually. Sooner or later, no doubt, he 
would right himself again; but in the meantime his plight was 
a sorry one. It was his duty to protect himself against another 
onslaught of the kind — to protect them both. For there was 
no blinking the fact: a few more weeks like the foregoing, 
and they would have been two of the wretchedest creatures on 
earth. They were miserable enough as it was, he in his, she in 
her own way. It must never happen again. She, too, had 
doubtless become sensible of this, in the course of the past three 
days. But had she? Could he say that? What had she 
thought? — what had she felt? And he told himself that 
was just what he would never know. 

He saw her as she had lain that morning, her arms long and 
white on the coverlet. He recalled all he had said, and tried 
to piece things together; an inner meaning seemed to be eluding 
him. Again, in memory, he heard the half-stifled cry that 
had drawn him to her side, felt her hands in his, the springy 
resistance of her hair, the delicate skin of her eyelids. Then, 
he had not understood the sudden impulse that had made him 
spring to his feet. But now, as he lay in the dusk, and summed 
up these things, a new thought, or hardly a thought so much 
as an intuition, flashed through his mind, instantly to take 


MAURICE GUEST 


458 

entire possession of him — just as if it had all along been present, 
in waiting. Simultaneously, the colour mounted to his face: he 
refused to harbour such a thought, and put it from him, angry 
with himself. But it was not to be kept down; it rose again, 
in an inexplicable way — this suggestion, which was like a slur 
cast on her. Why, he demanded of himself, should it not have 
occurred to him before? — once, twenty, a hundred times? For 
the same thing had often happened: times without number, 
she had striven to keep him at her side. Was its presence to-day 
a result of his aimless irritation? Or was it because, after 
holding him at arm’s length for three whole days, she had asked, 
on returning to him, neither affection nor comradeship, only 
the blind gratification of sense? 

He did not know. But forgotten hints and trifles — words, 
acts, looks — which he had never before considered consciously, 
now recurred to him as damning evidence. With his arm still 
across his eyes, he lay and let it work in him; let doubts and 
frightful uncertainties grow up in his brain; suffered the most 
horrible suffering of all — doubt of the one beloved. He seemed 
to be looking at things from a new point, seeing them in dif- 
ferent proportions — all his own poor hopes and beliefs as well — 
and, while the spasm of distrust lasted, he felt inclined to doubt 
whether she had ever really cared for him. He even questioned 
his own feeling for her, seeking to discover whether it, too, had 
not been based on a mere sensual fancy. He saw them satis- 
fying an instinct, without reason and without nobility. And, 
by this light, he read a reason for the past months, which made 
him groan aloud. 

He rose and paced the room. If what he was thinking of 
her were true, then it would be better for both their sakes if 
he never saw her again. But, even while he said this, he knew 
that he would have to see her, and without loss of time. What 
he needed was to stand face to face with her, to look into her 
eyes, which, whatever they might do, had never learned to hide 
the truth, and there gain the certainty that his imaginings were 
monstrous — the phantoms of a melancholy October twilight. 

It was nearly nine o’clock, but there was no light in her room. 
He pictured her lying in the dark, and was filled with remorse. 
But he said her name in vain ; the room was empty. Lighting 
the lamp, he saw that the bedclothes had been thrown back over 
the foot-end of the unmade bed, as though she had only just 
left it. The landlady said that she had gone out, two hours 
previously, without leaving any message. All he could do 


MAURICE GUEST 


459 


was to sit down and wait ; and in the long half-hour that now 
went by, the black thoughts that had driven him there were for- 
gotten. His only wish was to have her safe beside him again. 

Towards ten o’clock he heard approaching sounds. A mo- 
ment later Louise came in. She blinked at the light, and began 
to unfasten her veil before she was over the threshold. 

He gave a sigh of relief. “ At last! Thank goodness! Where 
have you been ? ” 

“ Did you think I was lost? Have you been here long? ” 

“For hours. Where else should I be? But you — where 
have you been ? ” 

Standing before the table, she fumbled with the veil, which 
she had pulled into a knot. He did not offer to help her; he 
stood looking at her, and both voice and look were a little stern. 

“Why did you go out?” 

She did not look at him. “ Oh, just for a breath of air, 
I felt I ... I had to do something. 

From the moment of her entrance, even before she had spoken, 
Maurice was aware of that peculiar aloofness in her, which 
invariably made itself felt when she was engrossed by something 
in which he had no part. 

“ That’s hardly a reason^ he said nervously. 

With the veil stretched between her two hands, she turned 
her head. “Do you want another? Well, after you left me 
to-day, I lay and thought and thought . . . till I felt I should 
go mad, if I lay there any longer.” 

“ Yes, but all of a sudden, like this! After being in bed for 
three days ... to go out and . . .” 

“ But I have not been ill ! ” 

“ Go out and wander about the streets, at night.” 

“ I didn’t mean to be so late,” she said, and folded the veil 
with an exaggerated care. “ But I was hindered ; I had a little 
adventure.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Oh, nothing much. A man followed me — and I couldn’t 
get rid of him.” 

“ Go on, please ! ” He was astonished at the severity of his 
own voice. 

“Oh, don’t be so serious, Maurice!” She had folded the 
veil to a neat square, stuck three hatpins in it, and thrown it 
with her hat and jacket on the sofa. “ No one has tried to 
murder me,” she said, and raised both her hands to her hair. “ I 
was standing before Haase’s window — the big jeweller’s in the 


MAURICE GUEST 


460 

Peterstrasse , you know. Fve always loved jewellers’ windows 
— especially at night, when they’re lighted up. As a child, I 
thought heaven must be like the glitter of diamonds on blue 
velvet — the Jasper Sea, you know, and the pearly floor.” 

“ Never mind that now! ” 

“ Well, I was standing there, looking in, longer perhaps than 
I knew. I felt that some one was beside me, but I didn’t see 
who it was, till I heard a man’s voice say: f Schone Sachen , 
Fraulein, was?' Of course, I took no notice; but I didn’t run 
away, as if I were afraid of him. I went on looking into the 
window, till he said: ‘ Darf ich Ihnen etwas kaufen ?* and 
more nonsense of the same kind. Then I thought it was time 
to go. He followed me down the Peterstrasse , and when I came 
to the Rossplatz, he was still behind me. So I determined to 
lead him a dance. I’ve been walking about, with him at my 
heels, for over an hour. In a quiet street where there was no 
one in sight, he spoke to me again, and refused to go away until 
I told him where I lived. I pretended to agree, and, on the 
condition that he didn’t follow me any further, I gave him a 
number in the Querstrasse; and in case he broke his word, I 
came home that way. I hope he’ll spend a pleasant evening 
looking for me.” 

She laughed — her fitful, somewhat unreal laugh, which was 
always displeasing to him. To-night, taken in conjunction with 
her story, and her unconcerned way of telling it, it jarred on 
him as never before. 

“ Let me catch him here, and I’ll make it impossible for him 
to insult a woman again!” he cried. “For it is an insult — 
though you don’t see it in that light. You laugh as you 
tell it, as if something amusing had happened to you. You 
are so strange sometimes. — Tell me, dearest, why did you go 
out? When I asked you, you wouldn’t come.” 

“ No. Then I wasn’t in the mood.” Her smile faded. 

“ No. But after dark — and quite alone — then the mood takes 
you.” 

“ But I’ve done it hundreds of times before. I can take care 
of myself.” 

“ You are never to do it again — do you hear? — Why didn’t 
you give the fellow in charge ? ” he asked a moment later, in a 
burst of distrust. 

Again Louise laughed. “ Oh, a German policeman would 
find that rather funny than otherwise. It’s the rule, you know, 
not the exception. And the same thing has happened to me be- 


MAURICE GUEST 


461 

fore. So often that it’s literally not worth mentioning. I 
shouldn’t have spoken of it to-night if you hadn’t been so per- 
sistent. Besides,” she added as an afterthought — and, in the 
face of his grave displeasure, she found herself wilfully exag- 
gerating the levity of her tone — “ besides, this wasn’t the kind 
of man one gives in charge. Not the usual commercial-traveller 
type. A Graf, or Baron, at least.” 

He was as nettled as she had intended him to be. “ You talk 
just as if you had had experience in the class of man. — Do you 
really think it makes things any better? To my mind, it’s a 
great deal worse. — But the thing is — you don’t know how . . . 
You’re not to go out alone again at night. I forbid it. This is 
the first time for weeks ; and see what happens ! And it’s not — 
you may well say it has happened to you before. I don’t know 
what it is, but — The very cab-drivers look at you as they’ve 
no business to — as they don’t look at other women ! ” 

“Well, can I help that? — how men look at me?” she 
asked indignantly. “Do you wish to say it’s my fault? That 
I do anything to make them ? ” 

“ No. Though it might be better if you did,” he answered 
gloomily. “ The unpleasant thing is, though you do noth- 
ing .. . that it’s there all the same . . . something ... I 
don’t know what.” 

“ No, I don’t think you do, and neither do I. But I do 
know that you are being very rude to me.” As he made no 
reply, she went on: “ You will, however, at least give me credit 
for knowing how to keep men at a distance, though I can’t 
hinder them from looking at me. — And, for your own comfort, 
remember in future that I’m not an inexperienced child. 
There’s nothing I don’t know.” 

“You needn’t throw that up at me.” 

“I at you?” she laughed hotly. “That’s surely reversing 
the order of things, isn’t it? It ought to be the other way 
about.” 

“ Unfortunately it isn’t.” The look he gave her was made 
up of mingled anger and entreaty; but as she took no notice 
of it, he turned away, and going to the window, leaned his 
forehead against the glass. What affected him so disagree- 
ably was not the incident of the man following her, but her 
light way of regarding it. And as the knowledge of this came 
home to him, he was impelled to go on speaking. “ It’s a 
trifle to make a fuss about, I know,” he said. “ And I shouldn’t 
give it a second thought, if I could only feel, Louise, that 


MAURICE GUEST 


462 

you looked at it as I do . . . and felt about it as I do. You 
seem so indifferent to what it really means — it’s almost as if 
you enjoyed it. Other women are different. They resent such 
a thing instinctively. While you don’t even take offence. And 
men feel that in you, somehow. That’s what makes them look 
at you and follow you about. That’s what attracts them — 
and always has done — far too easily.” 

“ You among the rest! ” 

“ For God’s sake, hold your tongue! You don’t know what 
you’re saying.” 

“ Oh, I know well enough.” She put her hair back from 
her forehead, and passed her handkerchief over her lips. “ In- 
stead of lecturing me in this way, you might be grateful, I 
think, that I didn’t accept the man’s offer and go somewhere 
to supper with him. It’s dull enough here. You don’t make 
things very gay for me. To-day, altogether, you are treating 
me as if I were a criminal.” 

He did not answer; the words “You among the rest!” 
went on sounding in his ears. Yes, there was truth in them, 
a horrible truth. Who was he to sit in judgment? — either on 
her, or on those others who yielded to the attraction that went 
out from her. Had not he himself been in love with her be- 
fore he even knew her name. Had he then accused her? — 
laid the blame at her door? 

She caught a moth that was fluttering round the lamp, and 
carried it to the window. When, a moment later, he turned 
and gave her another unhappy look, she felt a kind of pity for 
him, forced as he was, by his nature, to work himself into un- 
happiness over such a trivial matter. 

“ Don’t let us say unkind things to each other,” she said 
slowly. “ I’m sorry. If I had known it would worry you so 
much, I shouldn’t have said a word about it. That would 
have been easy.” 

He felt her touch on his arm. As it grew warm and close, 
he, too, was filled with the wish to be at one with her again — 
to be lulled into security. He pressed her hand. 

“ Forgive me! To-day I’ve been bothered — pestered with 
black thoughts. Or else I shouldn’t go on like this.” 

Now she was silent; both stared out into the night. And 
then a strange thing happened. He began to speak again, and 
words rose to his lips, of which, a moment before, he had had 
no idea, but which he now knew for absolute truth. He said: 
“ I don’t want to excuse myself; I’m jealous, I admit it. And 


MAURICE GUEST 


463 

yet there is an excuse for me, Louise. For saying such things 
to you, I mean. To-night I — Have you ever thought, dear, 
what a difference it would make to us, if you had ... I mean 
if I knew . . . that you had never cared for anyone ... if 
you had never belonged to anyone but me ? That’s what I wish 
now more than anything else in the world. If I could just 
say to myself : no one but me has ever held her in his arms ; and 
no one ever will. Do you think then, darling, I could speak as 
I have to-night ? ” 

A moment back, he had had no thought of such a thing; 
now, here it was, expressed, over his lips — another of those 
strange, inlying truths, which were existent in him, and only 
waited for a certain moment to come to light. Strangest of 
all, perhaps, was the manner in which it impressed itself on 
him. In it seemed to be summed up his trouble of the after- 
noon, his suspense and irritation of the later hours. It was 
as if he had suddenly found a formula for them, and, as he 
stated it, he was dumbfounded by its far-reaching significance. 

A church-clock pealed a single stroke. 

“ Oh, yes, perhaps,” said Louise, in a low voice. She could 
not rouse herself to a very keen interest in his feelings. 

“No, not perhaps* Yes — a thousand times yes! Every- 
thing would be changed by it. Then I couldn’t torment you. 
And our love would have a certainty such as it can now never 
have.” 

“But you knew, Maurice! I told you — everything! You 
said it didn’t matter.” 

“And it doesn’t, and never shall. But to make it undone, 
I would cheerfully give years of my life. You’re a woman — - 
you can’t understand these things — or know what we miss. 
You mine only — life wouldn’t be the same.” 

For a moment she did not answer. Then the same toneless 
voice came out of the darkness at his side. “ But I am yours 
only — now. And it’s a foolish thing to wish for the im- 
possible.” 


VII 


It was, indeed, a preposterous thought to have at this date: 
no one knew that better than himself. And as long as he was 
with Louise, he kept it at bay; it was a fatuous thing even 
to allow himself to think, considering the past, and consid- 
ering all he knew. 

But next morning, as he sat with busy fingers, and a vacant 
mind, it returned. He thrust it angrily away, endeavouring 
to concentrate his attention on his music open before him. 
For a time, he believed he had succeeded. Then, the idea was 
unexpectedly present to him again, and this time more forcibly 
than before; it came like a sharp, swift stab of remembrance, 
and forced an exclamation over his lips. Discouraged, he let 
his hands drop from the keys of the piano; for now he knew 
that he would probably never be rid of it again. This was 
always the way with unpleasant thoughts and impressions: if 
they returned, after he had resolved to have done with them, 
they were henceforth part and parcel of himself, fixed ideas, 
against which his will was powerless. 

In the hope of growing used to the haunting reflection, and 
to the unhappiness it implied, he thought it through to the 
end — this strange, unsought knowledge, which had lain unsus- 
pected in him, and now became articulate. Once considered, 
however, it made many things clear. He could even account 
to himself now, for the blasphemous suggestions that had 
plagued him not twenty-four hours ago. If he had then not, 
all unconsciously, had the feeling that Louise had known too 
long and too well what love was, to be willing to live with- 
out it, such thoughts as those would never have risen in him. 

In vain he asked himself, why he should only now un- 
derstand these things. He could find no answer. Through- 
out the time he had known Louise, he had been better ac- 
quainted with her mode of life than anyone else: her past had 
lain open to him; she had concealed nothing, had been what 
she called “ brutally frank ” with him. And he had pro- 
tested, and honestly believed, that what had preceded their 
intimacy did not matter to him. Who could foresee that, 
on a certain day, an idea of this kind would break out in him — 

464 


MAURICE GUEST 


465 

like a canker? But this query took him a step further. Was 
it not deluding himself to say break out? Had not this shadow 
lurked in their love from the very beginning? Had it not 
formed an invisible barrier between them? It was possible — 
no, it was true; though he only recognised its truth at the 
present time. It had existed from the first: something which 
each of them, in turn, had felt, and vaguely tried to express. 
It had little or nothing to do with the fact that they had defied 
convention. That, regrettable though it might be, was beside 
the mark. The confounding truth was, that, in an emotional 
crisis of an intensity of the one they had come through, it was 
imperative to be able to say: our love is unparalleled, unique; 
or, at least: I am the only possible one; I am yours, you are 
mine, only. That had not been the case. What he had been 
forced to tell himself was, that he was not the first. And 
now he knew that, for some time past, he had been aware 
that he would always occupy the second place ; she was 
forced to compare him with another, to his disadvantage. And 
he knew more. For the first time, he allowed his thoughts to 
rove, unchecked, over her previous life, and he was no longer 
astonished at the imperfections of the present. To him, the 
gradual unfolding of their love had been a wonderful revela- 
tion ; to her, a repetition, and a paler and fainter one, of a tale 
she already knew by heart. And the knowledge of this awak- 
ened a fresh distrust in him. If she had loved that first time, 
as she had asserted, as he had seen with his own eyes that she 
did, desperately, abandonedly, how had it been possible for her 
to change front so quickly, to turn to him and love anew? 
Was such a thing credible? Was a woman’s nature capable 
of it? And had it not been this constant fear, lest he should 
never be able to efface the image of his predecessor, which, 
yesterday, had boldly stalked out as a dread that what had 
drawn her to him, had not been love at all? 

But this mood passed. He himself cared too well to doubt, 
for long, that in her own way she really loved him. What, 
however, he was obliged to admit was, that what she felt could 
in no way be counted the equal of his love for her: that had 
possessed a kind of primeval freshness, which no repetition, 
however passionately fond, could achieve. And yet, in his 
mind, there was still room for doubt — eager, willing doubt. 
It was due to his ignorance. He became aware of this, and, 
while brooding over these things, he was overmanned by the de- 
sire to learn, from her own lips, more about her past, to hear 


MAURICE GUEST 


466 

exactly what it had meant to her, in order that he might com- 
pare it with her present life, and with her feelings for him. 
Who could say if, by doing this, he might not drive away what 
was perhaps a phantom of his own uneasy brain ? 

He resolved to make the endeavour. But he was careful 
not to let her suspect his intention. First of all, he was full 
of compunction for his bad temper of the night before; he was 
also slightly ashamed of what he was going to do; and then, 
too, he knew that she would resent his prying. What he did 
must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her un- 
happy over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best 
to make her forget how disagreeable he had been. 

But the desire to know remained, became a morbid curiosity. 
If this were satisfied, he believed it would make things easier 
for both of them. But he was infinitely cautious. Sometimes, 
without a word, he took her face between his hands and 
looked into her eyes, as if to read in them an answer to the 
questions he was afraid to put — looked right into the depth 
of her eyes, where the pupils swam in an oval of bluish white, 
overhung by lids which were finely creased in their folds, and 
netted with tiny veins. But he said not a word, and the eyes 
remained unfathomable, as they had always been. 

Meanwhile, he did what he could to set his life on a solid 
basis again. But he was unable to arouse in himself a very 
vital interest in his work; some prompter-nerve in him seemed 
to have been injured. And often, he was overcome by the 
feeling that this perpetual preoccupation with music was only 
a trifling with existence, an excuse for not facing the facts of 
life. He would sometimes rather have been a labourer, worn 
out with physical toil. He was much alone, too; when he was 
not with Louise, he was given over to his own thoughts, and, 
day by day, fostered by the long, empty hours of practice, 
these moved more and more steadily in the one direction. The 
craving for a knowledge of the facts, for certainty in any form 
— this became a reason for, a plea in extenuation of, what he 
felt escaping him. 

Louise did not help him; she assented to what he did with- 
out comment, half sorry for him in what seemed to her his 
wilful blindness, half disdainful. But she, too, made a dis- 
covery in these tame, flat days, and this was, that it was one 
thing to say to herself: it is over and done with, and another 
to make the assertion a fact. Energy for the effort was lacking 
in her; for the short, sharp stroke, which with her meant 


MAURICE GUEST 


467 

action, was invariably born of intense happiness or unhappiness. 
Now, as the days went by, she asked herself why she should 
do it. It was so much easier to let things slide, until some- 
thing happened of itself, either to make the break, or to fill up 
the still greater emptiness in her life which a break would 
cause. And if he were content with what she could give him, 
well and good ; she made no attempt to deceive him. And it 
seemed to her that he was content, though in a somewhat pre- 
occupied way. But a little later, she acknowledged to herself 
that this was not the whole truth. There was habit to fight 
against — habit which could still give her hours of self-forgetful- 
ness — and one could not forgo, all at once, and under no 
pressing necessity to do so, this means of escape from the 
cheerlessness of life. 

But not for long did matters remain at this negative stage. 
Whereas, until now, the touch of her lips had been sufficient 
to chase away the shadows, the moment came, when, as he 
held her in his arms, Maurice was paralysed by the abrupt re- 
membrance: she has known all this before. How was it 
then? To what degree is she mine, was she his? What fine, 
ultimate shade of feeling is she keeping back from me? — His 
ardour was damped; and as Louise also became aware of his 
sudden coolness, their hands sank apart, and had no strength 
to join anew. 

Thus far, he had gone about his probings with skill, ques- 
tioning her in a roundabout way, trying to learn by means of 
inference. But after this, he let himself go, and put a bare- 
faced question. The subject once broached, there was no fur- 
ther need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence to 
the winds. He could not forget — he was goaded on by — the 
look she had given him, as the ominous words crossed his lips: 
it made him conscious once more of the unapproachable nature 
of that first love of hers. He grew reckless; and while he had 
hitherto only sought to surprise her and entrap her, he now 
began to try to worm things out of her, all the time spying on 
her looks and words, ready to take advantage of the least slip 
on her part. 

At first, before she understood what he was aiming at, 
Louise had been as frank as usual with him — that somewhat 
barbarous frankness, which took small note of the recipient’s 
feelings. But after he had put a direct question, and followed 
it up with others, of which she too clearly, saw the drift, 
she drew back, as though she were afraid of him. It was not 


MAURICE GUEST 


468 

alone the error of taste he committed, in delving in matters 
which he had sworn should never concern him; it was his 
manner of doing it that was so distasteful to her — his hints 
and inuendoes. She grew very white and still, and looked 
at him with eyes in which a nascent dislike was visible. 

He saw it; but it was now too late. Day by day, his pre- 
occupation with the man who had preceded him increased. 
The thought that continued to harass him was : if she had never 
known the other, all would now be different. With jealousy, 
his state of mind had only as yet, in common, a devouring 
curiosity and a morbid imagination, which allowed him to 
picture the two of them in situations he would once have 
blushed to think of. For the one thing that now mattered to 
him, what he would have given his life to know, and would 
probably never know, was concerned with the ultimate ratifi- 
cation of love. What had she had for the other that she 
could not give him? — that she wilfully refrained from giving 
him? For that she did this, and always had refused him part 
of herself, was now as plain to him as if it had been branded 
on her flesh. And the knowledge undermined their lives. If 
she was gentle and kind, he read into her words pity that she 
could give him no more; if she were cold and evasive, she was 
remembering, comparing; if she returned his kisses with her 
former warmth — well, the thoughts which in this case seized 
him were the most murderous of all. 

His mental activity ground him down. But it was not all 
unhappiness; the beloved eyes and hands, the wilful hair, and 
pale, sweet mouth, could still stir him; and there came hours 
of wishless well-being, when his tired brain found rest. As 
the days went by, however, these grew rarer; it also seemed 
to him that he paid dearly for them, by being afterwards more 
miserable, by suffering in a more active way. 

At times, he knew, he was anything but a pleasant com- 
panion. But he was losing the mastery over himself, and often 
a trifle was sufficient to start him off afresh on the dreary 
theme. Once, in a fit of hopelessness, he made her what 
amounted to reproaches for her past. 

“ But you knew !— everything ! — I told you all,” Louise 
expostulated, and there were tears in her eyes. 

“ I know you did. But Louise ” — he hesitated, half con- 
trite in advance, for what he was going to say — “ it might 
have been better if you hadn’t told me — everything, I mean. 
Yes, I believe it’s better not to know.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


469 

She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had 
forewarned him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she 
should not be obliged to see him. 

Another day, when they were walking in the Rosental , she 
made him extremely unhappy by disagreeing with him. 

“ If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, 
like figures from a slate ! ” he said moodily. 

But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. 
“ We should have nothing to remember.” 

“ That’s just it.” 

“ But it belongs to us ! ” She was roused to protest by the 
under-meaning in his words. “ It’s as much a part of ourselves 
as our thoughts are — or our hands.” 

“ One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You 
wouldn’t care if your past were gone? Say you wouldn’t.” 

But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, 
he would not rest content, she flung out her hands with an 
impatient gesture. “ How can you torment yourself so! If 
you insist on knowing, well, then, I wouldn’t part with an hour 
of what’s gone — not an hour! And you know it.” 

She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging 
on a bare branch, and carried them with her. 

He took one she held out to him, looked at it without see- 
ing it, and threw it away. “ Tell me, just this once, some- 
thing about your life before I knew you. Were you very 
happy? — or were you unhappy? Do you know, I once heard 
you say you had never known a moment’s happiness? — yes, 
one summer night long ago, over in the Nonne. How I 
hoped then it was true! But I don’t know. You’ve never told 
me anything — of all there must be to tell.” 

“ What you may have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, 
doesn’t concern me now,” Louise answered coldly. And then 
she shut her lips, and would say no more. She was wiser than 
she had been a week ago: she refused to hand her past over to 
him in order that he might smirch it with his thoughts. 

But she could not understand him — understand the motives 
that made him want to unearth the past. If this were jeal- 
ousy, it was a kind she did not know — a bloodless, bodiless 
kind, of which she had had no experience. 

But it was not jealousy; it was only a craving for certainty 
in any guise, and the more surely Maurice felt that he would 
never gain it, the more tenaciously he strove. For cer- 
tainty, that feeling of utter reliance in the loved one, which 


470 


MAURICE GUEST 


sets the heart at rest and leaves the mind free for the affairs 
of life, was what Louise had never given him; he had always 
been obliged to fall back on supposition with regard to her, 
equally at the height of their passion, and in that first arid 
stretch of time, when it was forbidden him to touch her hand. 
The real truth, the last-reaching truth about her, it would 
not be his to know. Soul would never be absorbed in soul; 
not the most passionate embraces could bridge the gulf; to 
their last kiss, they would remain separate beings, lonely and 
alone. 

As this went on, he came to hate the vapidities of the con- 
certo in G major. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, 
and, at the same time, to be forced to reiterate the empty 
rhetoric of this music! From this time forward, he could not 
hear the name of Mendelssohn without a shiver of repugnance. 
How he wished now, that he had been content with the bare 
sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than he 
had to say. 

One day, towards the end of November, he was working 
with even greater distaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, 
he flapped the music to, shut the piano, and went out. A 
stroll along the muddy little railed-in river brought him to the 
Pleissenburg , and from there he crossed the Konigsplatz to 
the Briiderstrasse. He had not come out with the intention 
of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o’clock, 
the afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had 
to be got through. He had been walking at haphazard, and 
without relish; now his pace grew brisker. Having reached 
the house, he sprang nimbly up the stairs, and was about to 
insert his key in the little door in the wall, when he was 
arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talking to 
some one, and, at the noise he made outside, she raised her 
voice — purposely, no doubt. He could not hear what was being 
said, but the second voice was a man's. For a minute he stood, 
with his key suspended, straining his ears ; then, afraid of being 
caught, he went downstairs again, where he hung about, between 
stair and street-door, in order that anyone who came down 
would be forced to pass him. At the end of five minutes, how- 
ever, his patience was spent: he remembered, too, that the person 
might be as likely to go up as down. He mounted the stairs 
again, rang the bell, and had himself admitted by the land- 
lady. 

He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual 


MAURICE GUEST 


47i 


pantomime of winks and signs, she whispered to him that a 
gentleman was with Fraulein — ein schoner junger Mann! 
Maurice pushed her aside, and opened the sitting-room door. 
Two heads turned at his entrance. 

On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little 
student of medicine with whom she had danced so often at the 
ball. He sat there, smiling and dapper, balancing his hard 
round hat on his knee, and holding gloves in his hand. 

Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair 
was half uncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the 
look of annoyance that crossed her face at his unceremonious 
entry. She raised astonished eyebrows. Then, however, she 
shook hands with him. 

“I think you know Mr. Herries. ,, 

Maurice bowed stiffly across the table; Herries replied in 
kind, without discommoding himself. 

“ How d’ye do? I believe we’ve met,” he said carelessly. 

As Maurice made no rejoinder, but remained standing in an 
uncompromising attitude, Herries turned to Louise again, and 
went on with what he had been saying. He was talking of 
England. 

“ I went back to Oxford after that,” he continued. “ I’ve 
diggings there, don’t you know? An old chum of mine’s a 
fellow of Magdalen. I was just in time for eights’ week. A 
magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Ever seen the race? 
No? Oh, I say, that’s too bad. You must come over for 
it, next year.” 

“Mr. Herries only returned from England a few days 
ago,” explained Louise, and again raised warning brows. “ Do 
sit down. There’s a chair.” 

“ Yes. I was over for the whole summer. Didn’t work 
here at all, in fact,” added Herries, once more letting his 
bright eyes snapshot the young man, who, on sitting down, laid 
his shabby felt hat in the middle of the table. 

“ But now you intend to stay, I think you said ? ” Louise 
threw in at random, after they had waited for Maurice to 
fill up the pause. 

“ Yes, for the winter semester, anyhow. And I’ve got to 
tumble to, with a vengeance. But I mean to have a good 
time all the same. Even though it’s only Leipzig, one can 
have a jolly enough time.” 

Again there was silence. Louise flushed. “ I suppose you’re 
hard at work already?” 


472 


MAURICE GUEST 


“Yes. Got started yesterday. Frogs, don’t you know? — 
the effect of a rare poison on frogs.” 

This trivial exchange of words stung Maurice. Herries’s 
manner seemed to him intolerably familiar, lacking in respect; 
and he kept telling himself, as he listened, that, having re- 
turned from England, the fellow’s first thought had been of 
her. He had not opened his lips since entering; he sat staring 
at them, forgetful of good manners; and, after a little, both 
began to feel ill at ease. Their eyes met for a moment in this 
sensation, and Herries cleared his throat. 

“What did you do with yourself in summer? ” he queried, 
and could not restrain a smile, at the fashion in which the 
other fellow was giving himself away. “ You weren’t in 
England at all, I think you said? We hoped we might meet 
there, don’t you remember? Too bad that I had to go off 
without saying good-bye.” 

“ No, I changed my mind and stayed here. But I shouldn’t 
do it again. It was so hot.” 

“ Must have been simply beastly.” 

Maurice jerked his arm; a vase which was standing at his 
elbow upset, and the water trickled to the floor. Neither 
offered to help him; he had to stoop and mop it up with his 
handkerchief. 

For a few moments longer, the conversation was eked out. 
Then Herries rose. With her hand in his, he said earnestly: 
“ Now you must be merciful and relent. I shan’t give up 
hope. Any time in the next fortnight is time enough, remem- 
ber. ’Pon my word, I’ve dreamt of those waltzes of ours 
ever since. And the floor at the Prusse is still better, don’t 
you know? You won’t have the heart not to come.” 

From under her lids, Louise shot a rapid glance at Mau- 
rice. He, too, had risen; he was standing stiff, pale, and 
solemn, visibly waiting only till Herries had gone, to make 
himself disagreeable. She smiled. 

“ Don’t ask me to give an answer to-day. I’ll let you know 
— will that do? A fortnight is such a long time. And then 
you’ve forgotten the chief thing. I must see if I have anything 
to wear.” 

“Oh, I say! . . . if that’s all! Don’t let that bother you. 
That black thing you had on last time was ripping — awfully 
jolly, don’t you know? ” 

Louise laughed. “Well, perhaps,” she said, as she opened 
the door. 


MAURICE GUEST 


473 


“ Good business! ” responded Herries. 

He nodded in Maurice’s direction, and they went out of 
the room together. Maurice heard their voices in laughing 
rejoinder, heard them take leave of each other at the hall- 
door. . After that there was a pause. Louise lingered, before 
returning, to open a letter that was lying on the hall-table ; she 
also spoke to Fraulein Griinhut. When she did come back, all 
trace of animation had gone from her face. She busied herself 
at once with the flowers he had disarranged, and this done, 
ordered her hair before the hanging glass. Maurice followed 
her movements with a sarcastic smile. 

Suddenly she turned and confronted him. 

“ Maurice ! ... for Heaven’s sake, don’t glare at me like 
that! If you’ve anything to say, please say it, and be done 
with it.” 

“ You know well enough what I have to say.” His voice 
was husky. 

“Indeed, I don’t.” 

“ Well you ought to.” 

“Ought to? — No: there’s a limit to everything! Take your 
hat off that table! — What did you mean by bursting into the 
room when you heard some one was here? And, as if that 
weren’t enough — to let everybody see how much at home you 
are — your behaviour — your unbearable want of man- 
ners . . .” She stopped, and pressed her handkerchief to her 
lips. 

“ I believed you didn’t care what people thought,” he threw 
in, morosely defiant. 

“ That’s a poor excuse for your rudeness.” 

“ Well, at least tell me what that fool wanted here.” 

“Have you no ears? Couldn’t you hear that he has just 
come back from England, and is calling on his friends?” 

“ Do you expect me to believe that ? ” 

“ Maurice! ” 

“ Oh, he has always been after you — since that night. It’s 
only because he wasn’t here long enough . . . and his manner 
shows what he thinks of you . . . and what he means.” 

“What do you mean? Do you wish to say it’s my doing 
that he came here to-day? — Don’t you believe me?” she de- 
manded, as he did not answer. 

“ And you in that half-dressed condition ! ” 

“Could I dress before him? How abominable you are!” 

He tried to explain. “Yes. Because ... I hate the sight 


474 


MAURICE GUEST 


of the fellow. — You didn’t know he was coming, did you, or 
you wouldn’t have seen him ? ” 

“ Know he was coming ! ” She wrenched her hands away. 
“ Oh! . . 

“ Say you didn’t! ” 

“Maurice! — Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely 
you don’t believe ” 

“ Oh, don’t ask me what I believe. I only know I won’t 
have that man hanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day 
that I came round earlier; he might have been here for hours, 
without my suspecting it. Who knows if you would have told 
me either? — Would you have told me, Louise?” 

“ Oh, how can you be like this ! What is the matter with 
you? ” 

He put his arms round her, with the old cry. “ I can’t 
bear you even to look at another man. For he’s in love with 
you, and has been, ever since you made him crazy by dancing 
with him as you did.” 

With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her 
hair. “ Promise me you won’t see him again.” 

Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. “ Oh there’s always 
something fresh to promise. I’m tired of it — of being hedged 
in, and watched, and never trusted.” 

“ Tired of me, you mean.” 

She looked bitterly at him. “ There you are again ! ” 

“ Just this once — to set my mind at rest. Just this once, 
Louise ! — darling ! ” 

But she was silent. 

“ Then you’ll let him come here again ? ” 

“ How do I know? — But if I promised what you ask, I 
should not be able to go with him to the Hotel de Prusse on 
the fifteenth.” 

“You mean to go to that dance?” 

“Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?” 

“ Louise ! ” 

“ Maurice ! ” She mocked his tone, and laughed. “ Oh, 
go at once,” she broke out the next moment, “ and order 
Griinhut never to let another visitor inside the door. Make 
me promise never to cross the threshold alone — never to speak 
to another mortal but yourself! Cut off every pleasure and 
every chance of pleasure I have ; and then you may be, but only 
may be, content.” 

“ You’re trying how far you can go with me.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


475 

“ Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of 
the things I love best? Not six months ago you knew and 
helped me to it yourself.” 

“ Yes, then” he answered. “ Then I could refuse you 
nothing.” 

She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand 
to his forehead. “ You won’t be so cruel, I know.” 

“ You know more than I do.” 

“ Do you realise what it means if you go ? ” In fancy, he 
was present, and saw her passed from one pair of arms to 
another. 

“ I realise nothing — but that I am very unhappy.” 

“ Have I no influence over you any more — none at all? ” 

“ Can’t you come, too, then ? — if you are afraid to let me 
out of your sight ? ” 

“I? To see you ” He broke off with wrathful abrupt- 

ness. “ Thanks, I would rather be shot.” But at the mingled 
anger and blankness of her face, he coloured. “ Louise, put an 
end to all this. Marry me — now, at once! ” 

“ Marry you? I? No, thank you. We’re past that stage, 
I think. — Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make 
any difference ? ” 

“ Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here! ” — and he pulled her 
to him. 

From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was 
changed. The incident of Herries’s visit, her refusal to promise 
what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, 
with regard to which he could not get certainty from her: 
these things seemed to open up nightmare depths, to which 
he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague fears 
which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like 
shadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons 
for their lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he 
could not alter jot or tittle of what had happened; he could 
only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over 
it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a 
black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And 
he would cling to it — for who knew what the future held in 
store for him ? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not 
in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with 
him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its 
head: who will come after me? Another blind attraction 
only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of 


476 


MAURICE GUEST 


constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, he was 
now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a different 
way. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside 
her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to him. He 
did not question her further; but the poison worked the more 
surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jeal- 
ousy, now wide awake, had at last a definite object to lay 
hold of. 

In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life 
a burden to her. What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn 
from him? But his evil moods were now beyond command. 
He began to suspect deceit in her actions as well as in what 
she said. The idea that this other, this smirking, wax-faced 
man, might somehow steal her from him, hung over him like 
a fog, obscuring his vision. It necessitated continued watchful- 
ness on his part. And so he dogged her, mentally, and in 
fact until his own heart all but broke under the strain. 

One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained 
heavily during the night, and the unpaved roads were inch- 
deep in mud. The sky was a level sheet of cloud, darker and 
more forbidding in the east. 

Their direction was Maurice’s choice. Louise would have 
liked better to keep to the town: for, though the streets, too, 
were mud-bespattered, there would soon be lights, and the 
reflection of lights in damp pavements. She yielded, however, 
without even troubling to express her wish. But just because 
of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, at every turn, 
she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarity seized 
her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a more 
composed frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her 
want of restraint, into silence. He suffered under her loose- 
ness of tongue and laughter: her sallow, heavy-eyed face was 
ill-adapted to such moods; below her feverish animation there 
lurked, he was sure of it, a deadly melancholy. He had 
always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety. Now, 
in addition, he asked himself: what has happened to make her 
like this? 

Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, 
too, was silent. Having gained his end, Maurice wished to 
atone for it, and slipping his arm through hers, he took her 
hand. For a few steps they walked on in this fashion. Then, 
he received one of those sudden impressions which flash on us 
from time to time, of having seen or done a certain thing 


MAURICE GUEST 


477 

before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then he knew. 
Just in this way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come 
towards him with Schilsky, that very first day. It was no 
doubt a habit of hers. Like this, too, she would, in all prob- 
ability, walk with the one who came after. And the picture 
of Herries, in the place he now occupied, was photographed on 
his brain. 

He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind 
was off again on its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for 
it. As he stood back to let her pass before him, on a dry strip 
of the path, his eye caught a yellow rose she was wearing at 
her belt. Till now he had seen it without seeing it. 

“Why are you wearing that rose?” 

Louise looked down from him to the flower and back 
again. “Why? — you know I like to wear flowers.” 

“Where did you get it?” 

She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply. 

“ You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw 
you. Do you remember ? ” 

“ How should I remember? It’s so long ago.” 

“ Where had you got that one from, then? ” 

She repeated the same words. “ How should I know 
now ? ” 

“ But I know. It was from him — he had given it to you.” 

She raised her shoulders. “ Perhaps.” 

“Perhaps? No. For certain.” 

“ Well, and if so — was there anything strange in that?” 

They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: 
“ Who has given you this one ? ” 

“ Maurice ! ” There was a note of warning in her voice. 

He heard it in vain. “ Give it to me, Louise.” 

“ No — let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is.” 

“ Please give it to me,” he urged, rendered the more de- 
termined by her refusal. 

“ I wish to keep it.” 

“ And I mean to have it.” 

To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her 
belt and gave it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a 
moment, then threw it over the bridge they were crossing, into 
the river. It struggled, filled with muddy water, and floated 
away. 

In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what 
he had gained by his action. She had given him the rose, and 


MAURICE GUEST 


478 

he had destroyed it; but he would never know how she had 
come by it, and what it had been to her. 

He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole 
length of the Schleussiger Weg. Then the inevitable regret 
for his hastiness followed. He took her limply hanging hand 
and pressed it. But there was no responsive pressure on her 
part. Louise looked away from him, beyond the woods, as far 
as she could see, in the vain hope of there discovering some 
means of escape. 


VIII 


In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewand- 
haus, and forced, by reason of the crowd, to pause on every 
step, Madeleine overheard the talk of two men behind her, one 
of whom, it seemed, had all the gossip of the place at his finger- 
tips. From what she caught up greedily, as soon as Mau- 
rice’s name was mentioned, she learnt a surprising piece of 
news. “ A cat and dog life,” was the phrase used by the 
speaker. As she afterwards picked her way through snow and 
slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that it was impossible 
to feel regret at what she had heard. Perhaps, after all, things 
would come right of themselves. In order to recover from 
his infatuation, to learn what Louise really was, it had only 
been necessary for Maurice to be constantly at her side. — Was 
it not Goethe who said that the way to cure a bad habit was 
to indulge it? 

But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. 
Late one afternoon she had entered Seyffert’s Cafe, to drink 
a cup of chocolate. At a table parallel with the one she 
chose, two fellow-students were playing draughts. Made- 
leine had only been there for a few minutes, when their talk, 
which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, 
leapt, with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she was 
interested. To her astonishment, she now heard Louise’s 
name coupled with that of another man. 

“ Well, I never ! ” said the second of the two behind her. 
“ I say it’s your move. — That’s rough on Guest, isn’t it ? ” 

Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had 
spoken. 

“Excuse me, who is Herries?” she asked without cere- 
mony. 

In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was 
one thing for the two to drift naturally apart; another for 
Maurice to see himself superseded. If this were true, jeal- 
ousy, and nothing else, would be at the root of their disunion. 
Madeleine felt very unwilling to mix herself up in the affair: 
it would be like plunging two clean hands into dirty water. 
But then, you never could tell how a man would act in a 

479 


480 MAURICE GUEST 

case like this: the odds were ten to one he did something 
foolish. 

And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons impera- 
tive. This failing, she tried to waylay him going to or from 
his classes; but the only satisfaction she gained, was the know- 
ledge of his irregularity: during the week she waited she did 
not once come face to face with him. Next, she looked 
round her for some common friend, and found that he had not 
an intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still more 
plainly, and again he ignored her letter. 

One Saturday afternoon, she was walking along the crowded 
streets of the inner town. She had been to the Motette , in 
the Thomaskirchej and was now on her way home, carrying 
music from Klemm’s library. The snow had melted to mud, 
and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; the collar 
of her cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felt 
hat covered her head like an extinguisher. 

On entering the Peterstrasse , she was jostled together with 
Dove. It was impossible to beat a retreat. 

Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he 
walked with a somewhat pompous emphasis through slush 
and stinging rain, holding his umbrella straight aloft over him, 
as he might have carried a banner. He was shocked to find 
Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and loaded 
himself with her music — all with that air of matter-of-course- 
ness, which invariably made her keen to decline his aid. Dove 
was radiant; he prospered as do only the happy few; and his 
satisfaction with himself, and with the world in general, was 
somehow expressed even through the medium of his long neck 
and gently sloping shoulders. He greeted Madeleine with 
an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow 
smile which sometimes set her wondering if he were not, per- 
haps, being inwardly satirical at the expense of other people, 
fooling them by means of his own foolishness. But, however 
this might be, the cynical feelings that took her in his presence, 
mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess 
of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or 
wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence. 

However, she checked the desire to snub him — to snub 
until she had succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, 
she believed, must lurk somewhere in Dove — for, as she 
plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the 
weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom she 


MAURICE GUEST 


481 

might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by 
congratulating her companion on his recent performance in 
an Abendunterhaltung; at the time, even she had been forced 
to admit it a creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately 
considered it epochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He 
could not refrain from letting fall that the old director had 
afterwards thanked him in person; but, in the next breath, 
he pointed out a slip he had made in a particular passage of the 
sonata. It had not, it was true, been observed, he believed, 
by anyone except Schwarz and himself; still it had caused him 
considerable annoyance; and he now related how, as far as he 
could judge, it had come about. 

The current inquiries concerning the Priifungen then passed 
between them. 

“ Poor old Schwarz ! ” said Madeleine. “ We shall be few 
enough, this year. Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven’t seen 
him for an age.” 

“ I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey 
of himself,” said Dove. “ He had another shocking row with 
Schwarz last week.” 

“ Tch, tch, tch!” said Madeleine. “Heinz is a freak. — 
And Maurice Guest, what about him? ” 

“ I haven’t seen him lately.” 

“Indeed? How is that?” 

“ I’m not in the same class with him now. His hour has 
been changed.” 

“ Has it indeed ? ” said Madeleine thoughtfully. This ac- 
counted for her having been unable to meet Maurice. “ What’s 
he playing, do you know ? ” 

“The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;” and Dove 
looked at her out of the corner of his eye. 

“ How’s he getting on with it?” she queried afresh, in the 
same indifferent tone. 

“ I really couldn’t say. As I mentioned, he’s in another 
class.” 

“ Oh, but you must have heard ! ” said Madeleine. “ It’s 
no use putting me off,” she added, with determination. “ I 
want to find out about Maurice.” 

“ And I fear I can’t assist you. All I have chanced to hear 
— mere rumour, of course — is that . . . well, if Guest 
doesn’t pull himself together, he won’t play at all. — By the 
way, what did you think of James the other night, in the 
Lisztvereinf ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


482 

“ Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course ! ” said 
Madeleine tartly. “ But I warn you,” she continued, “ it’s 
of no use changing the subject, or pretending you don’t know. 
I intend to speak of Maurice.” 

“ Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to 
me.” — Dove could never be induced to call her Madeleine, as 
her other friends did. 

“ And why, pray, are you to be the exception ? ” 

“ Because, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t see any more 
of Guest. He mixes in a different set now. — And as for me, 
well, my thoughts are occupied with, I trust, more profitable 
things.” 

“ What? You have thoughts, too? ” 

“ I hope you don’t claim a monopoly of them?” said Dove, 
and smiled in his imperturbable way. As, however, Made- 
leine persisted, he grew grave. “ It’s not a pleasant subject. 
I should really rather not discuss it, Miss Madeleine.” 

“ Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t let us play the prudish or 
sentimental! ” cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. “ Of 
course, it isn’t pleasant. Do you think I should ” — “ bother 
with you,” was on her tongue. She checked herself, and sub- 
stituted — “trouble you about it, if it were? But Maurice 
was once a friend of ours — you don’t deny it, I hope ? ” she 
threw in challengingly ; for Dove muttered something to him- 
self. “ And I want to get at the truth about him. I’m sorrier 
than I can say, to hear, on all sides, what a fool he’s making 
of himself.” 

Dove w T as suavely silent. 

“ Of course,” continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflec- 
tion — “ of course, I can’t expect you to see it as I do. Men 
look at these things differently, I know. Possibly if I were 
a man, I, too, should stand by, with my hands in my pockets, 
and watch a friend butt his head against a stone wall — think- 
ing it, indeed, rather good fun.” 

She had touched Dove on a tender spot. “ I can assure 
you, Miss Madeleine,” he said impressively, as they picked 
their steps across a dirty road — “ I can assure you, you are 
mistaken. I think just as strictly in matters of this kind as 
you yourself. — But as to interfering in Guest’s ... in 
his private affairs, well, frankly, I shouldn’t care to try it. 
He was always a curiously reserved fellow.” 

“ Reserved — obstinate — pig-headed ! — call it what you like,” 
said Madeleine. “ But don’t imagine I’m asking you to in- 


MAURICE GUEST 


483 

terfere. I only want you to tell me, briefly and simply, what 
you. know about him. And to make it easier for you, I’ll 
begin by telling you what I know. — It’s an old story, isn’t 
it, that Maurice once supplanted some one else in a certain 
young woman’s favour? Well, now I hear that he, in turn, 
is to be laid on the shelf. — Is that true, or isn’t it? ” 

“Really, Miss Madeleine! — that’s a very blunt way of 
putting it,” said Dove uncomfortably. 

“ Oh, when a friend’s at stake, I can’t hum and haw,” 
said Madeleine, who could never keep her temper with Dove 
for long. “ I call a spade a spade, and rejoice to do it. What 
I ask you to tell me is, whether I’ve been correctly informed 
or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer’s name coupled 
with that of a man called Herries?” 

But Dove was stubborn. “ As far as I’m concerned, Miss 
Madeleine, the truth is, I’ve hardly exchanged a word with 
Guest since spring. Into his . . . friendship with Miss 
Dufrayer, I have never felt it my business to inquire. I 
believe — from hearsay — that he is much changed. And I feel 
convinced his Priifung will be poor. Indeed, I’m not sure 
that he should not be warned off it altogether.” 

“ Could that not be laid before him ? ” 

“ I should not care to undertake it.” 

There was nothing to be done with Dove; Madeleine felt 
that she was wasting her breath; and they walked across the 
broad centre of the Rossplatz in silence. 

“ Do you never think,” she said, after a time, “ how it would 
simplify life, if we were able to get above it for a bit, and 
see things without prejudice? — Here’s a case now, where a lit- 
tle real fellowship and sympathy might work wonders. But 
no ! — no interference ! — that’s the chief and only consideration ! ” 

It had stopped raining. Dove let down his umbrella, and 
carried it stiffly, at some distance from him, by reason of 
its dampness. “ Believe me, Miss Madeleine,” he said, as he 
emerged from beneath it. “ Believe me, I make all allowance 
for your feelings, which do you credit. A woman’s way of 
looking at these things is, thank God, humaner than ours. But 
it’s a man’s duty not to let his feelings run away with him. — 
I agree with you, that it’s a shocking affair. But Guest went 
into it with his eyes open. And that he could do so — but 
there was always something a little ... a little peculiar about 
Guest.” 

“ I suppose there was. One can only be thankful, I suppose. 


MAURICE GUEST 


484 

that he’s more or less of an exception — among his own country- 
men, I mean, of course. Englishmen are not, as a rule, given 
to that kind of thing.” 

“Thank God they’re not!” said Dove with emotion. 

“ Well, our ways part here,” said Madeleine, and halted. 
As she took her music from him, she asked : “ By the way, 

when shall we be at liberty to congratulate you ? ” 

It was not at all “ by the way ” to Dove. However, he only 
smiled; for he had grown wiser, and no longer wore his 
heart on his coat-sleeve. “ You shall be one of the first to 
hear, Miss Madeleine, when the news is made public.” 

“ Thanks greatly. Good-bye. — Oh, no, stop a moment ! ” 
cried Madeleine. It was more than she could bear to see him 
turn away thus, beaming with self-content. “ Stop a moment. 
You won’t mind my telling you, I’m sure, that I’ve been dis- 
appointed with you this afternoon. For I’ve always thought 
of you as a saviour in the hour of need, don’t you know? — 
one does indulge in these fancy pictures, of one’s friends — a 
strong man, helping with tact and example. And here you go, 
toppling my picture over, without the least remorse. — Well, 
you know your own business best, I suppose, but it’s unkind 
of you, all the same, to destroy an illusion. One has few enough 
of them in this world. — Ta-ta! ” 

She laughed satirically, and turned on her heel, regardless 
of the effect of her words. 

But Dove was not offended; on the contrary, he felt rather 
flattered. He did not, of course, care in the least about what 
Madeleine called her illusions; but the mental portrait she 
had drawn of him corresponded exactly to that attitude in 
which he was fondest of contemplating himself. For it could 
honestly be said that, hitherto, no one had ever applied to him 
for aid in vain: he was always ready, both with his time and 
with good advice. And the idea that, in the present instance, he 
was being untrue to himself, in other words, that he was 
letting an opportunity slip, ended by upsetting him altogether. 

Until now, he had not regarded Maurice and Maurice’s 
doings from this point of view. By nature, Dove was op- 
posed to excess of any kind; his was a clean, strong mind, 
which caused him instinctively to draw back from everything, 
in morals as in art, that passed a certain limit. Nothing on 
earth would have persuaded him to discuss his quondam friend’s 
backsliding with Madeleine Wade; he was impregnated with 
the belief that such matters were unfit for virtuous women’s 


MAURICE GUEST 


485 

ears, and he applied his conviction indiscriminately. Now, 
however, the notion of Maurice as a poor erring sheep, waiting, 
as it were, to be saved — this idea was of undeniable attractive- 
ness to Dove, and the more he revolved it, the more convinced 
he grew of its truth. 

But he had reasons for hesitating. Having valiantly over- 
come his own disappointments, first in the case of Ephie, then 
of pretty Susie, he now, in his third suit, was on the brink 
of success. The object of his present attachment was a Scotch 
lady, no longer in her first youth, and several years older than 
himself, but of striking appearance, vivacious manners, and, if 
report spoke true, considerable fortune. Her appearance in 
Leipzig was due to the sudden burst of energy which often 
inspires a woman of the Scotch nation when she feels her youth 
.escaping her. Miss MacCallum, who was abroad nominally 
to acquire the language, was accompanied by her aged father 
and mother; and it was with these two old people that it be- 
hoved Dove to ingratiate himself; for, according to the pa- 
triarchal habits of their race, the former still guided and de- 
termined their daughter’s mode of life, as though she were 
thirteen instead of thirty. Dove was obliged to be of the utmost 
circumspection in his behaviour; for the old couple, uprooted 
violently from their native soil, lived in a mild but constant 
horror at the iniquity of foreign ways. They held the pro- 
fession of music to be an unworthy one, and threw up their 
hands in dismay at the number of young people here com- 
placently devoting themselves to such a frivolous object. It 
was necessary for Dove to prove to them that a student of 
music might yet be a man of untarnished principles and blame- 
less honour. And he did not find the task a hard one; the 
whole bent of his mind was towards sobriety. He frequented 
the American church with his new friends on Sunday after- 
noon; gave up skating on that day; went with the old gentle- 
man to Motets and Passions; and eschewed the opera. 

But now, his ambition had been insidiously roused, and day 
by day it grew stronger. If only the affair with Maurice had 
not been of so unsavoury a nature! Did he, Dove, become 
seriously involved, it might be difficult to prove to judges so 
severe as his future parents-in-law, that he had acted out of 
pure goodness of heart. For, that he would be embroiled, in 
other words, that he would have success in his mission, there 
was no manner of doubt in his mind — a conviction he shared 
with the generality of mankind: that it is only necessary for 


MAURICE GUEST 


486 

an offender’s eyes to be opened to the enormity of his wrong- 
doing, for him to be reasonable and to renounce it. 

While Dove hesitated thus, torn between his reputation on the 
one hand, his missionary zeal on the other; while he hesitated, 
an incident occurred, which acted as a kind of moral finger- 
post. In the piano-class, one day, just as Dove was about to 
leave the room, Schwarz asked him if he were not a friend 
of Herr Guest’s. The latter had been absent now from two 
lessons in succession. Was he ill? Did no one know what had 
happened to him? Dove made light of the friendship, but 
volunteered his services, and was bidden to make inquiries. 

He went that afternoon. 

Frau Krause looked a little gruffer than of old; and left 
him to find his own way to Maurice’s room. In accordance 
with the new state of things, Dove knocked ceremoniously at 
the door. While his knuckles still touched the wood, it was 
flung open, and he stood face to face with Maurice. For a 
moment the latter did not seem to recognise his visitor; he had 
evidently been expecting some one else. 

Then he repaired his tardiness, ceased to hold the door, and 
Dove entered, apologising for his intrusion. 

“ Just a moment. I won’t detain you. As you were 
absent from the class all last week, Schwarz asked to-day if 
you were ill, and I said I would step round and see.” 

“ Very good of you, I’m sure. Sit down,” said Maurice. 
His face changed as he spoke; a look of relief and, at the same 
time, of disappointment flitted across it. 

“ Thanks. If I am not disturbing you,” answered Dove. 
As he said these words, he threw a glance, the significance of 
which might have been grasped by a babe, at the piano. It 
had plainly not been opened that day. 

Maurice understood. “ No, I was not practising,” he said. 
“ But I have to go out shortly,” and he looked at his watch. 

“ Quite so. Very good. I won’t detain you,” repeated 
Dove, and sat down on the proffered chair. “ But not prac- 
tising? My dear fellow, how is that? Are you so far forward 
already that it isn’t necessary? Or is it a fact that you are not 
feeling up to the mark?” 

“ Oh, I’m all right. I get my work over in the morning.” 

Now he, too, sat down, at the opposite side of the table. 
Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. 
He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy 
one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even 


MAURICE GUEST 


487 

the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; 
and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he 
talked, as if at random, of other things. 

Maurice tapped the table. He kept his eyes fixed on Dove’s 
face, as though he were drinking in his companion’s solemn ut- 
terances. In reality, whole minutes passed without his know- 
ing what was said. At Dove’s knock, he had been certain 
that a message had come from Louise — at last. This was the 
night of the ball; and still she had given him no promise that 
she would not go. They had parted, the evening before, after 
a bitter quarrel; and he had left her, vowing that he would 
not return till she sent for him. He had waited the whole 
day, in vain, for a sign. What was Dove with his pompous 
twaddle to him? Every slight sound on the stairs or in the 
passage meant more. He was listening, listening, without 
cessation. 

When he came back to himself, he heard Dove droning on, 
like a machine that has been wound up and cannot stop. 

“ Now, I hope you won’t mind my saying so,” were the 
next words that pierced his brain. “ You must not be of- 
fended at my telling you; but you are hardly fulfilling the ex- 
pectations we, your friends, you know, had formed of you. 
My dear fellow, you really must pull yourself together, or 
February will find you still unprepared.” 

Maurice went a shade paler ; he was clear, now, as to the ob- 
ject of Dove’s visit. But he answered in an off-hand way. 
“ Oh, there’s time enough yet.” 

“ No. That’s a mistaken point of view, if I may say so,” 
replied Dove in his blandest manner. “ Time requires to be 
taken by the forelock, you know.” 

“Does it?” Maurice allowed the smile that was expected 
of him to cross his face. 

“ Most emphatically — And we fellow-students of yours are 
not the only people who have noticed a certain — what shall I 
say? — a certain abatement of energy on your part. Schwarz 
sees it, too — or I am much mistaken.” 

“ What? — he, too? ” said Maurice, and pretended a mild sur- 
prise. For some seconds now he had been mentally debating 
with himself whether he should not, there and then, show Dove 
the door. He decided against it. A “ Damn your interfer- 
ence! ” meant plain-speaking, on both sides; it meant a bandying 
of words ; and more expenditure of strength than he had to spare 
for Dove. Once more he drew out and consulted his watch. 


488 


MAURICE GUEST 


“ Unfortunately, yes,” said Dove, ignoring the hint. “ I as- 
sume it, from something he let drop this afternoon. Now, you 
know, your Mendelssohn ought to have been a brilliant piece 
of work — yes, the expression is not too strong. And it still must 
be. My dear Guest, what I came to say to you to-day — one, at 
any rate, of the reasons that brought me — was, that you must 
not allow your interest in what you are doing to flag at the 
eleventh hour.” 

Maurice laughed. “ Oh, certainly not ! Most awfully good 
of you to trouble.” 

“ No trouble at all,” Dove assured him. He flicked some dust 
from his trouser-knee before he spoke again. “ I . . . er . . . 
that is, I had some talk the other day with Miss Wade.” 

“ Indeed ! ” replied Maurice, and was now able accurately to 
gauge the motor origin of Dove’s appearance. “ How is she? 
How is Madeleine? ” 

“ She was speaking of you, Guest. She would, I think, like 
to see you.” 

“ Yes. I’ve rather neglected her lately, I’m afraid. — But 
when there’s so much to do, you know . . 

“ It’s a pity,” said Dove, passing over the last words, and nod- 
ding his head sagaciously. “ She’s a staunch friend of yours, is 
Miss Madeleine. I think it wouldn’t be too much to say, she 
was feeling a little hurt at your neglect of her.” 

“ Really ? I had no idea so many people took an interest 
in me.” 

“ That is just where you are mistaken,” said Dove warmly. 
“ We all do. And for that very reason, I said to myself, I will 
be spokesman for the rest: I’ll go to him and tell him he must 
pull through, and do himself credit — and Schwarz, too. We are 
so few this year, you know.” 

“ Yes, poor old man! He has got badly left.” 

“ Yes. That was one reason. And then . . . but you 
assure me, don’t you, that you will not take what I am going 
to say amiss? ” 

“ Not in the least. It’s awfully decent of you. But I’m 
sorry to say my time’s up. And every minute is precious just 
now — as you know yourself.” 

He rose, and, for the third time, referred to his watch. After 
an ineffectual attempt to continue, Dove was also forced to rise, 
with the best part of his message unuttered. And Maurice 
hurried him, glum and crestfallen, to the door, for fear of the 
still worse tactlessness of which he might make himself guilty. 


MAURICE GUEST 


489 

They groped in silence along the dark lobby. For the sake 
of parting with a friendly and neutral word, Maurice said, as 
he opened the door: “ By the way, I hear we shall soon have 
to offer congratulations and good wishes.” 

To his surprise, Dove, who had already crossed the threshold, 
looked blank, and drew himself up. 

“ Indeed?” he said, and the tone w T as, for him, quite short. 
“ I . . the fact is . . . I’ve no idea of what you are referring 
to.” 

On re-entering his room, Maurice went back to the window, 
and taking up his former attitude, began to beat anew that tattoo 
on the panes, which had been his chief employment during the 
day. His eyes were sore with straining at the corner of the 
street, tired of looking at his watch to see how the time passed. 
He had steadfastly believed that Louise would yield in this 
matter, and, at the last, recall him in a burst of impulsive regret. 
But, as the day crawled by without a word from her, his con- 
fident conviction weakened ; and, at the same time, his resolve not 
to go back till she sent for him, failed. He repeated, in memory, 
some of the bitter things they had said to each other, to see if he 
had not left himself a loophole of escape; but only with one 
half of his brain: the other was persistently occupied with the 
emptiness of the street below. When a clock struck half-past 
seven, he could bear the suspense no longer: he put on his hat 
and coat, and went out. He felt tired and unslept, and dragged 
along as if his body were a weight to him. A fine snow was 
falling, which froze into icicles on the beards of the passers-by, 
and on the glistening pavements. The distance had never seemed 
so long to him ; it had also never seemed so short. 

A faint and foolish hope still refused to be extinguished. 
But it went out directly he had unlocked the door; and he 
learned what he had come to learn, without the exchange of a 
word. The truth met him, that he should have been here hours 
ago, commanding, imploring; instead of which he had sat at 
home, nursing a futile and paltry pride. 

The room was warm, and bright with extra candles. It was 
also in that state of confusion which accompanied an elaborate 
toilet on the part of Louise. Fully dressed, she stood before 
the console-glass, and arranged something in her hair. She did 
not turn at his entrance, but she raised her eyes and met his in 
the mirror, without pausing in what she was doing. 

He looked over her shoulder at her reflected face. The cold 
steadiness, the open hostility of her look, took his strength away. 


490 


MAURICE GUEST 


He sat down on the foot-end of the bed, and put his head in his 
hands. Minutes passed, and still he remained in this position. 
For what was the use of his speaking? Her mind was made 
up ; nothing would move her now. 

Then came the noise of wheels in the street below. Uncover- 
ing his eyes, Maurice looked at her again ; and, as he did so, his 
feelings which, until now, had had something of the nature of 
a personal wound, gave place to others with the rush of a storm. 
She wore the same sparkling, low-cut dress as on the previous 
occasion; arms and shoulders were as ruthlessly bared to view. 
He remembered what he had heard said of her that night, 
and felt that his powers of endurance were at an end. With a 
stifled exclamation, he got up from the bed, and going past her, 
into the half of the room beyond the screen, caught up the first 
object that came to hand, and threw it to the floor. It was a 
Dresden-china figure, and broke to pieces. 

Louise gave a cry, and came running out to see what he 
had done. “ Are you mad ? How dare you ! . . . break 

my things.” 

She held a candle above her head, and by its light, he saw, in 
the skin of neck and shoulder, all the lines and folds that were 
formed by the raising of her arm. He now saw, too, that her 
hair was dressed in a different way, that her dark eyebrows had 
been made still darker, and that she was powdered. This dis- 
covery had a peculiar effect on him : it rendered it easier for him 
to say hard things to her; at the same time, it strengthened his 
determination not to let her go out of the house. Moving aim- 
lessly about the room, he stumbled against a chair, and kicked 
it from him. 

“ A month ago, if some one had sworn to me that you would 
treat me as you are doing to-night, I should have laughed in his 
face,” he said at last. 

Louise had put the candle down, and was standing with her 
back to him. Taking up a pair of long, black gloves, she began 
to draw one over her hand. She did not look up at his words, 
but went on stroking the kid of the glove. 

“You’re only doing it to revenge yourself — I know that! 
But what have I done, that you should take less thought for my 
feelings than if I were a dog? ” 

Still she did not speak. 

“You won’t really go, Louise? — you won’t have the heart 
to. — I say you shall not go! It will be the end — the end of 
everything! — if you leave the house to-night.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


491 


She pulled her dress from his hand. “ You’re out of your 
senses, I think. The end of everything! Because, for once, I 
choose to have some pleasure on my own account! Any other 
man would be glad to see the woman he professes to care for, 
enjoy herself. But you begrudge it to me. You say my pleasures 
shall only come through you — who have taken to making life 
a burden to me! Can’t you understand that I’m glad to get 
away from you, and your ill-humours and mean, abominable 
jealousy. You’re not my master. I’m not your slave.” She 
tugged at a recalcitrant glove. “ It is absurd,” she went on a 
moment later. “ All because I wish to go out alone for once. — 
But did I even want to? Why, if it means so much to you, 
couldn’t you have bought a ticket and come too ? But no ! you 
wouldn’t go yourself, and so I was not to go either. It’s on 
a level with all your other behaviour.” 

“ I go! ” he cried. “ To watch you the whole evening in that 
man’s arms! — No, thank you! It’s not good enough. — You, 
with your indecent style of dancing ! ” 

She wheeled round, as if the insult had struck her; and for 
a moment faced him, with open lips. Then she thought better 
of it : she laughed derisively, with a wanton undertone, in order 
to hurt him. 

“ You would at least have had me under your own eyes.” 

As she spoke, she nodded to the old woman who opened the 
door to say that the droschke waited below. A lace, scarf was 
lying on the table; Louise twisted it mechanically round her 
head, and began to struggle with an evening cloak. Just as 
she had succeeded in getting it over her shoulders, Maurice 
took her by the arms and bent her backwards, so that the cloak 
fell to the floor. 

“You shall not go! ” 

She stemmed her hands against him, and determinedly, yet 
with caution, pushed herself free. 

“ My dress — my hair! How dare you! ” 

“ What do I care for your dress or your hair? You make me 
mad!” 

“And what do I care whether you’re mad or not? Take 
your hands away ! ” 

“Louise! ... for God’s sake! ... not with that man. 
At least, not with him. He has said infamous things of you. 
I never told you — yes, I heard him say — 'heard him compare 
you with . . . soiled goods he called you. — Louise ! Louise ! ’ 

“ Have you any more insults for me? ” 


492 


MAURICE GUEST 


“No, no more!” He leaned his back against the door. 
“ Only this: if you leave this room to-night, it’s the end.” 

She had picked up her cloak again. “ The end ! ” she re- 
peated, and looked contemptuously at him. “ I should welcome 
it, if it were. — But you’re wrong. The end, the real end, came 
long ago. The beginning was the end! — Open that door, and 
let me out! ” 

He heard her go along the hall, heard the front door shut be- 
hind her, and, after a pause, heard the deeper tone of the house 
door. The droschke drove away. After that, he stood at the 
window, looking out into the pitch-dark night. Behind him, 
the landlady set the room in order, and extinguished the addi- 
tional lights. 

When she had finished, and shut the door, Maurice faced the 
empty room. His eyes ranged slowly over it; and he made a 
vague gesture that signified nothing. A few steps took him to 
the writing-table, on which her muff was lying. He lifted it 
up, and a bunch of violets fell into his hand. They brought her 
before him as nothing else could have done. Beside the bed, he 
went down on his knees, and drawing her pillow to him, 
pressed it round his head. 

The end, the end! — the beginning the end: there was truth 
in what she had said. Their love had had no stamina in it, no 
vital power. He was losing her, steadily and surely losing her, 
powerless. to help it — rather it seemed as if some malignant 
spirit urged him to hasten on the crisis. Their thoughts 
seemed hopelessly at war. — And yet, how he loved her! He 
made himself no illusions about her now; he understood just 
what she was, and what she would always be; the many con- 
flicting impulses of her nature lay bare to him. But he loved 
her, loved her: all the dead weight of his physical craving for 
her was on him again, confounding, overmastering. None the 
less, she had left him; she had no need for him; and the 
hours would come, oftener and oftener, when she could do with- 
out him, when, as now, she voluntarily sought the company of 
other men. The thought suffocated him; he rose to his feet, 
and hastened out of the house. 

A little before one o’clock, he was stationed opposite the side- 
entrance to the Hotel de Prusse. He had a long time to wait. 
As two o’clock approached, small batches of people emerged, at 
first at intervals, then more and more frequently. Among the 
last were Herries and Louise. Maurice remained standing in 
the shadow of some houses, until they had parted from their 


MAURICE GUEST 


493 


companions. He heard her voice above all the rest ; it rang out 
clear and resonant, just as on that former occasion when she had 
drunk freely of champagne. 

With many final words and false partings, she and Herries 
separated from the group, and turned to walk down the street. 
As they did so, Maurice sprang out from his hiding-place, and 
was suddenly in front of them, blocking their progress. 

At his unexpected apparition, both started; and when he 
roughly took hold of her arm, Louise gave a short cry. Herries 
put out his hand, and smacked Maurice’s down. 

“ What are you doing there? Take your hands off this lady, 
damn you ! ” he cried in broken German, not recognising 
Maurice, and believing that he had to deal with an ordinary 
Nachtschivarmer . 

The savageness with which he was turned on, enlightened 
him. “ Damn you ! ” retorted Maurice in English. “ Take 
your hands off her yourself! She belongs to me — to me, do 
you hear? — and I intend to keep her.” 

“ You drunken cur! ” said Herries. He had instinctively al- 
lowed Louise to withdraw her arm; now he stood irresolute, 
uncertain how she would wish him to act. She had gone very 
pale; he believed she was afraid. “ Isn’t there a droschke any- 
where? ” he said, and looked angrily round. “ I really can’t see 
you exposed to this . . . this sort of thing, you know.” 

Louise answered hurriedly. “No, no. And please go! I 
shall be all right. I’m sorry. — I had enjoyed it so much. I will 
tell you another time, how much. Good night, and thank you. 
No . . . please! . . . yes, a delightful evening.” Her words 
were almost inaudible. 

“ Delightful indeed ! ” said Herries with warmth. Then 
he stood aside, raised his hat, and let them pass. 

Maurice had his hand on her wrist, and he dragged her after 
him, over the frozen pavements, far more quickly than she could 
in comfort go, hampered as she was by snow-boots and by her 
heavy cloak. But she followed him, allowed herself to be 
drawn, without protest. She felt strangely will-less. Only 
sometimes, when the thought of the indignity he had laid upon 
her came over her anew, did she whisper; “ How dare you! . . . 
oh, how dare you ! ” 

He did not look at her, or answer her, and all might have 
gone well, so oddly did this treatment affect her, had he only 
persisted in it. But the mere contact of her hand softened him 
towards her ; her nearness worked on him as it never failed to do. 


MAURICE GUEST 


494 

He was exhausted, too, mentally and physically, and at the 
thought that, for this night at least, his sufferings were over, he 
could have shed tears of relief. Slackening his pace, he began 
to speak, began to excuse and exculpate himself before ever she 
had blamed him, endeavouring to make her understand some- 
thing of what he had gone through. In advance, and before she 
had expressed it, he sought to break down her spirit of animosity. 

The longer he spoke, the harder she felt herself grow. He 
was at it again, back at his eternal self -justification. Oh, why, 
for this one evening at least, could he not have enforced his will, 
and have made her do what he wished, without explanation! 
But the one plain, simple way was the only way he never thought 
of taking. “ I hate you and despise you ! I shall never forgive 
you for your behaviour to-night ! — never ! ” And now it was she 
who pressed forward, to get away from him. 

He turned the key in the house-door. But before he could 
open the door, Louise, pushing in front of him, threw it back, 
entered the house, and, the next moment, the door banged in 
his face. He had just time to withdraw his hand. He heard 
her steps on the stair, mounting, growing fainter; he heard the 
door above open and shut. 

For a second or two, he stood listening to these sounds. But 
when it dawned on him that she had shut him out, he pressed 
both hands against the wood of the heavy door, and tried to 
shake it open. He even beat his fist against it, and only de- 
sisted from this when his knuckles began to smart. 

Then, on looking down, he saw that the key was still in the 
lock. He stared at it, stupidly, without understanding. But, yes 
— it was his own key; he himself had put it in. He took it out 
again, and holding it in his hand, looked at it, after the fashion 
of a drunken man, who does not recognise the object he holds. 
And even while he did this, he burst into a peal of laughter, 
which made him lean for support against the wall of the house. 
The noise he made sounded idiotic, sounded mad, in the quiet 
street ; but he was unable to contain himself. She had left him 
the key — had left the key! Oh, what a fool he was! 

His laughter died away. He opened the door, noiselessly, as 
he had learned by practice to do, and as noiselessly entered the 
vestibule and went up the stairs. 


IX 


Several versions of the contretemps with Herries were afloat 
immediately. All agreed in one point : Maurice Guest had been 
in an advanced stage of intoxication. A scuffle was said to have 
taken place in the deserted street; there had been tears, and 
prayers, and shrill accusing voices. In the version that reached 
Madeleine’s ears, blows were mentioned. She stood aghast at 
the disclosures the story made, and at all these implied. Until 
now, Maurice had at least striven to preserve appearances. If 
once you became callous enough not to care what people said of 
you, you wilfully made of yourself a social outcast. 

That same afternoon, as she was mounting the steps of the 
Conservatorium, she came face to face with Kralft. They had 
not met for weeks; and Madeleine remarked this, as they stood 
together. But she was not thinking very deeply of him or his 
affairs; and when she asked him if he would go across to her 
room, and wait for her there, she was following an impulse that 
had no connection with him. As usual, Krafft had nothing par- 
ticular to do; and when she returned, half an hour later, she 
found him lying on her sofa, with his arms under his head, his 
knees crossed above him. The air of the room was grey with 
smoke; but, for once, Madeleine set no limit to his cigarettes. 
Sitting down at the table, she looked meditatively at him. For 
some moments neither spoke. 

But as Krafft drew out his case to take another cigarette, a 
tattered volume of Reclam’s Universal Library fell from his 
pocket, and spread itself on the floor. Madeleine stooped and 
pieced it together. 

“What have we here? — ah, your Bible!” she said sarcasti- 
cally: it was a novel by a modern Danish poet, who died young. 
“ You carry it about with you, I see.” 

“To-day I needed Stimmung. But don’t say Bible; that’s 
an error of taste. Say ‘ death-book.’ One can study death in it, 
in all its forms.” 

“ To give you Stimmung! I can’t understand your love for 
the book, Heinz. It’s morbid.” 

“ Everything’s morbid that the ordinary mortal doesn’t wish 

495 


MAURICE GUEST 


496 

to be reminded of. Some day — if I don’t turn stoker or acrobat 
beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions — some day I 
shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama worth 
making.” 

“ Morbid, Heinz, morbid! ” 

“ All women are not of your opinion. I remember once hear- 
ing a woman say, had the author still lived, she would have 
pilgrimaged barefoot to see him.” 

“ Oh, I dare say. There are women enough of that kind.” 

“ Fools, of course? ” 

“ Extravagant ; unbalanced. The class of person that suffers 
from a diseased temperament. — But men can make fools of them- 
selves, too. There are specimens enough here to start a museum 
with.” 

“ Of which you, as Normalmensch , could be showman.” 

Madeleine pushed her chair back towards the head of the 
sofa, so that she came to sit out of the range of Krafft’s eyes. 

“ Talking of fools,” she said slowly, “ have you seen any- 
thing of Maurice Guest lately? ” 

Krafft lowered a spike of ash into the tray. “ I have not.” 

“ Yes; I heard he had got into a different hour,” she said dis- 
connectedly. As, however, Krafft remained impassive, she took 
the leap. “ Is there — can nothing be done for him, Heinz? ” 

Here Krafft did just what she had expected him to do: rose 
on his elbow, and turned to look at her. But her face was in- 
scrutable. 

“ Explain,” he said, dropping back into his former position. 

“ Oh, explain ! ” she echoed, firing up at once. “ I suppose 
if a fellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men 
would still ask for explanations. Listen to me. You’re the only 
man here Maurice was at all friendly with — I shouldn’t turn 
to you, you scoffer, you may be sure of it, if I knew of any- 
one else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had 
a good deal of influence with him. It might still have. Go 
to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of 
his future, and of all the other things he has apparently for- 
gotten. — You needn’t laugh! You could do it well enough if 
you chose — if you weren’t so hideously cynical. — Oh, don’t 
laugh like that! You’re loathsome when you do. And there’s 
nothing natural about it.” 

But Krafft enjoyed himself undisturbed. “ Not natural? It 
ought to be,” he said when he could speak again. “ Oh, you 
English, you English! — was there ever a people like you? Don’t 


MAURICE GUEST 


497 

talk to me of men and women, Mada. Only an Englishwoman 
would look at the thing as you do. How you would love to 
reform and straitlace all us unregenerate youths! You’ve done 
your best for me — in vain! — and now it’s Guest. Mada, you 
have the Puritan’s watery fluid in your veins, and Cain’s mark 
on your brow: the mark of the race that carries its Sundays, its 
language, its drinks, its dress, and its conventions with it, when- 
ever it goes, and is surprised, and mildly shocked, if these things 
are not instantly adopted by the poor, purblind foreigner. — 
You are the missionaries of the world! ” 

“ Oh, I’ve heard all that before. Some day, Heinz, you really 
must come to England and revise your impressions of us. How- 
ever, I’m not going to let you shirk the subject. I will 
tell you this. I know the milieu Maurice Guest has sprung 
from, and I can judge, as you never can, how totally he is un- 
fitting himself to return. The way he’s going on — I hear on 
all sides that he’ll never ‘ make his Prilfungf now, and you 
yourself know his certificate won’t be worth a straw.” 

“ There’s something fascinating, I admit,” Krafft went on, 
“ about a people of such a purely practical genius. And it fol- 
lows, as a matter of course, that, being the extreme individualists 
you are, you should question the right of others to their particular 
mode of existence. For individualism of this type implies a 
training, a culture, a grand style, which it has taken centuries 
to attain — we have still centuries to go, before we get there. — 
If we ever do! For we are the artists among nations — waxen 
temperaments, formed to take on impressions, to be moulded 
this way and that, by our age, our epoch. You are the moral- 
ists, we are the . . .” 

“ The immoralists.” 

“ If you like. In your vocabulary, that’s a synonym for 
Kilns tier.” 

“ You make me ill, Heinz! ” 

“ Kiiss ' die Hand ! ” He was silent, following a smoke-ring 
with his eyes. “ Seriously, Mada,” he said after a moment — 
but there was no answering seriousness in his face, which mocked 
as usual. “ Seriously, now, I suppose you wouldn’t admit what 
this Dressur, this hohe Schule Guest is going through, might be 
of service to him in the end ? ” 

“ No, indeed, I wouldn’t,” she answered hotly. “ You talk 
as if he were a circus-horse. Think of him now, and think of 
him as he was when he first came here. A good fellow — 'wasn’t 
he? And full to the brim of plans and projects — ridiculous 


MAURICE GUEST 


498 

enough, some of them — but the great thing is to be able to 
make plans. As long as a man can do that, he’s on the upward 
grade. — And he had talent, you said so yourself, and unlimited 
perseverance.” 

“ Good God, Madeleine ! ” burst out Krafft. “ That you 
should have been in this place as long as you have, and still 
remain so immaculate ! — Surely you realise that something more 
than talent and perseverance is necessary? One can have talent 
as one has a hat . . . use it or not as one likes. — I tell you, 
the mill Guest is going through may be his salvation — artisti- 
cally.” 

“And morally?” asked Madeleine, not without bitterness. 
“ Must one give thanks then, if one’s friend doesn’t turn out a 
genius ? ” 

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. “ As you take it. The artist 
has as much to do with morality, as, let us say, your musical 
festivals have to do with art. — And if his genius isn’t strong 
enough to float him, he goes under, und damit basta! The better 
for art. There are bunglers enough. — But I’ll tell you this,” 
he rose on his elbow again, and spoke more warmly. “ Since 
I’ve seen what our friend is capable of ; how he has allowed him- 
self to be absorbed; since, in short, he has behaved in such a 
highly un-British way — well, since then, I have some hope of 
him. He seems open to impression. — And impressions are the 
only things that matter to the artist.” 

“ Oh, don’t go on, please! I’m sick to death of the very words 
art and artist.” 

“Cheer up, Mada! You’ve nothing of the kind in your 
blood.” He stretched himself and yawned. “ Nor has he, 
either, I believe. A face may deceive. And a clear head, and 
unlimited perseverance, and intelligence, and ambition — none 
of these things is enough. The Lord asks more of his chosen.” 

Madeleine clasped her hands behind her head, and tilted back 
her chair. 

“ So you couldn’t interfere, I see? Your artistic conscience 
would forbid it.” 

“ Why don’t you do it yourself ? ” He scrutinised her face, 
with a sarcastic smile. 

“ Oh, say it out ! I know what you think.” 

“ And am I not right? ” 

“ No, you’re not. How I hate the construction you put on 
things! In your eyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can’t 
even imagine to yourself a friendship between a man and a 


MAURICE GUEST 


49 9 

woman. Such a thing isn’t known here — in your nation of 
artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, 
to want their calves fatted for any but the one sacrifice. Girls 
have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them with an under- 
meaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting! 
What a fate is theirs, if they don’t manage to catch a man! 
Gossip and needlework are only slow poison.” 

“ Now you’re spiteful. But I’ll tell you something. Such 
friendships as you speak of are only possible where the woman 
is old — or ugly — or abnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or 
a clever woman, or some other freak of nature. Now, our 
women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. They know what they’re 
here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, they still have 
their share of physical attraction. While yours — good God! I 
wonder you manage to keep the breed going ! ” 

“ Stop, Heinz! ” said Madeleine sternly. “ You are illogical, 
and indecent; and you know there’s a limit I don’t choose to 
let you pass. — You’re wrong, too. You’ve only to look about 
you, here, with unbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest 
girls belong to. — But never mind! You only launch out in this 
way that you may not be obliged to discuss Maurice Guest. I 
know you. I can read you like a book.” 

“You are not very old ... or ugly ... or abnormal, 
Mada.” 

She smiled in spite of herself. “ And are we not friends, 
pray ? ” 

“ Something that way. — But in all you say about Guest, the 
impersonal note is wanting. You’re jealous.” 

“ I’m nothing of the sort! — But you’ll at least allow me to 
resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this . . . this 
vampire? ” 

Krafft laughed. “ Vampire is good ! — A poor, distraught — ” 

“ Spare your phrases, Heinz. She’s bad through and through, 
and stupid into the bargain.” 

“ Lulu stupid? Eij ei, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. 
She has a touch of the other extreme — of genius.” 

" Naf — Well, if this is another of your manifestations of 
genius, then permit me to hate — no, to loathe it, in all its 
forms.” 

" Ganz nach Belieben! It’s a privilege of your sex, you know. 
There never was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square 
talent.” 

“ A crack this way, and it’s madness ; that, and the world 


500 


MAURICE GUEST 


says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discover- 
ing it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a 
flea’s jump.” 

“ But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving — 
that some women have a genius for loving? — No, why do I 
ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster — a placard.” 

“ What a people you are for words! You make phrases about 
everything. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle 
woman ” 

“ Fickle woman ! fickle fiddle-sticks! ” he interrupted. “ That’s 
only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these 
things — die Herren Dichter — are not agreed to this day whether 
it’s man who’s fickle or woman. In this mood it’s one, in that, 
the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep.” 

“Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly; if what you 
say were true, vice would be condoned.” 

“Vice!!” he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. 
“Vice! — my dear Mada! — sweet, innocent child! . . . No, 
no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an un- 
limited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what 
is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine 
opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together 
in delirious pleasure, in Saus und Braus. — Nothing could be 
falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her 
nature, and the suffering is there, too. She’s born gifted with 
the faculty. And a woman of the type we’re speaking of, is as 
often as not the flower of her kind. — Or becomes it. — For see 
all she gains on her way : the mere passing from hand to hand ; 
the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded 
— why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth 
of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one 
who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience — a turn 
of thought — it may be only an intuition- — which she has not 
had before.” 

“And the contamination? The soul?” cried Madeleine; 
two red spots had come out on her cheeks. 

“ As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn’t 
need one. All she needs is tact and taste.” 

“ You are the eternal scoffer.” 

“ I never was more serious in my life. — But let us put it 
another way. What does a — what does any beautiful woman 
want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose 
to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what 


MAURICE GUEST 


501 

she is : one of the few perfect things on this imperfect earth. Let 
her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time 
enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul — if, indeed, she 
doesn’t bury herself alive, as it’s her duty to do, instead of de- 
caying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, more 
humiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was 
once like marble? — than a mouth visibly losing its form? — the 
slender shoulders we have adored, broadening into massivity? — 
all the fine spiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heavi- 
ness? — all the barbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before 
our eyes, time treats the woman who is no longer young. — No, 
no ! As long as she has her beauty, a woman is under no neces- 
sity to bolster up her conscience, or to be reasonable, or to think. 
— Think? God forbid! There are plain women enough for 
that. We don’t ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for us, or to 
solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more 
eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth — the upward look 
of two dark eyes — than in all women have said or done from 
Sappho down. Spring, colour, light, music, perfume: they are 
all to be found in the curves of a perfect throat or arm.” 

Madeleine’s silence bristled with irony. 

“ And that,” he went on, “ was where the girl you are blas- 
pheming had such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct 
taught her what was required of her. She would fall into an 
attitude, and remain motionless in it, as if she knew the eye 
must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak — for she, too, 
had hours of a desperate garrulity — then one was content, as 
well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body spoke 
when her lips did ; she would pass so rapidly from one position 
to another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of 
all this multitude, you would not be able to carry one away with 
you. — If some of her ways of expressing herself in motion could 
be caught and fixed, a sculptor’s fame would be made. — A 
painter’s, if he could reproduce the trick she has of smiling en- 
tirely with her eyes and eyebrows. — And then her hands! — 
Mada, I wonder you other women don’t weep for envy of them. 
She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or 
to finger at her hair, and the world is hers. — Do you really think 
a man asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hands as those ? — 
Good God, no ! He worships her and adores her. There is only 
one place for him, and that’s on his knees before her.” 

“ Well, really, Heinz ! ” said Madeleine, and the spots on 
her cheeks burnt a dull red. “ In imagination, do you know, 


502 


MAURICE GUEST 


I’m carried just three years backwards? Do you remember that 
spring evening, when you came rushing in here to me? ‘ Eve 
seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’m drunk with 
her.’ And how I couldn’t understand? For I thought her 
plain, just as I still do. — But then, if I remember aright, 
your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair 
it . . . hm! ... is now.” 

“ It was not. — But now, you understand, Mada, that I think 
a man makes a good exchange of career, and success, and other 
such accidents of his material existence, for the right to touch 
these hands at will. The one thing necessary is, that he be fit 
for the post. I demand of him that he be a gourmand, a con- 
noisseur in beauty. And it’s here, mind you, that I have doubts 
of our friend. — Is it clear to you ? ” 

“ As clear as day, thanks. And you may be quite sure of me 
never applying to you for help again. I shall respect your 
principles.” 

“ And mind you, I don’t say Guest may not come out of the 
affair all right — 'enriched for the rest of his life.” 

“Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever 
bothered with you.” 

Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put 
his hands on her two shoulders, and laid his head on his right 
arm, so that she, who was taller than he was, looked down on 
the roundnesses of his curly hair. “ You’re a good fellow, Mada 
— a good fellow! Ja, ja — who knows! If you had had just 
a little more of the Ewigweibliche about you ! ” 

“ Too much honour . . . But you don’t expect English- 
women to join your harem, do you? ” 

“ There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a 
woman of your type. But it’s the charm — physical charm — we 
poor wretches can’t do without.” 

“ Upon my word, it’s almost a declaration ! ” cried Madeleine, 
not unnettled. “ Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and 
marry the person you ought to. Take pity on the poor thing’s 
constancy. Unless,” she added, a moment later, with a sar- 
castic laugh, “ since you’re still so infatuated with Louise, you 
persuade her to transfer her favours to you. That would solve 
all difficulties in the most satisfactory way. She would have 
the variety that seems necessary to her existence ; you could lie 
on your knees before her all day long; and our friend would 
be restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It’s a good 
idea.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


503 

“ Do you think she’d have me? ” he asked, as he shook him- 
self into his coat. 

“ Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is con- 
cerned, nothing’s impossible — I’ve always maintained it.” 

“Well, ta-ta! — You shall have early news, I promise you.” 

Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the Rose of 
Sharon. But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, 
when he turned and came back. Holding her door ajar, he 
stuck a laughing face into the room. 

“ Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It’s a colossal 
idea.” 

But Madeleine had had enough of him. “ I’m glad it pleases 
you. Now go, go! You’ve played the fool here long enough.” 

When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whis- 
tling. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his felt hat 
pulled down over his eyes. At the corner, he was so lost in 
thought as to be unable to guide his feet: he stood and gazed at 
the pavement. Still on the same spot, he pushed his hat to the 
back of his head, and burst into such an eerie peal of laughter 
that some ladies, who were coming towards him, started back, 
and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavement, in order to 
avoid passing him too nearly. 

The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely 
out of the way, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the 
Briiderstrasse. 

The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, 

she said ; but Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed 

the door. 

Outside Louise’s room, he listened, with bent head. Having 
satisfied himself, he turned the handle of the door and went in. 

Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had 
snowed uninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden 
sky, flake after flake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became 
part of the fallen mass. At the opening of the door, she did not 
stir; for it would only be Maurice coming back to ask for- 
giveness; and she was too unspeakably tired to begin all over 
again. 

Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough 
head, to the bedraggled tail of the dressing-gown. 

“ Grass' Gott, Lulu! " 

At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream. 

“You, Heinz! You!" 

The blood suffused her face a purplish red; her voice was 


504 


MAURICE GUEST 


shrill with dismay; her eyes hung on the young man as though 
he were a returning spirit. 

With an effort, she got the better of her first fright, and took 
a step towards him. “How dare you come into this room!” 

Krafft hung his wet coat over the back of a chair, and wiped 
his face dry of the melted snow. 

“No heroics, Lulu!” 

But she could not contain herself. " Oh, how dare you! It’s 
a mean, dishonourable trick — only you would do it! ” 

“ Sit down and listen to what I have to say. It won’t take 
long. And it’s to your own advantage, I think, not to make a 
noise. — May I smoke? ” 

She obeyed, taking the nearest chair; for she had begun to 
tremble; her legs shook under her. But when he held out the 
case of cigarettes to her, she struck it, and the contents were 
spilled on the floor. 

“ Look here, Lulu,” he said, and crossing his legs, put one 
hand in his pocket, while with the other he made gestures suita- 
ble to his words. “ I’ve not come here to-day to rake up old 
sores. Time has gone over them and healed them, and it’s 
only your — nebenbei gesagt, extremely bad — conscience that 
makes you afraid of me. I’m not here for myself, but ” 

“ Heinz ! ” The cry escaped her against her will. “ For him ? 
You’ve come from him! ” 

He removed his cigarette and smiled. “Him? Which? 
Which of them do you mean ? ” 

“ Which ? ” It was another uncontrollable exclamation. Then 
the expression of almost savage joy that had lighted up her 
face, died out. “ Oh, I know you ! . . . know you and hate 
you, Heinz! I’ve never hated anyone as much as you.” 

“ And a woman of your temperament hates uncommonly 
well. — No, all jokes aside,” — the word cut her; he saw this, 
and repeated it. “ Joking apart, I’ve come to you to-day, merely 
to ask if you don’t think your present little affair has gone far 
enough? ” 

She was as composed as he was. “ What business is it of 
yours ? ” 

“ Oh, none. Except that the poor fool was once my friend.” 

She gave a daring laugh, full of suggestion. 

But Krafft was not put out by it. “ Don’t do that again,” he 
said. “ It sounds ugly ; and you have nothing to do with ugli- 
ness, you know. No, I repeat once more: this is not a personal 
matter.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


505 


“ And you expect me to believe that? ” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

It was now she who smiled derisively. “ Have you forgotten 
a certain evening in this room, three years ago ? ” 

But he did not flinch. “ Upon my word, if you are bold 
enough to recall that ! — However, the reminder was unnecessary. 
Tell me now: aren’t you about done with Guest?” 

For still a moment, she fought to keep up her show of dignity. 
Then she broke down. “ Heinz! — oh, I don’t know! Oh, yes, 
yes, yes — a thousand times, yes! Oh, I’m so tired — I can’t tell 
you how tired I am — of the very sight of him ! I never wanted 
him, believe me, I didn’t ! He thrust himself on me. It was not 
my doing.” 

“ Oh, come now! Tell that to some one else.” 

“ Yes, I know: you only think the worst of me. But though 
I was weak, and yielded, anyone would have done the same. He 
gave me no peace. — But I’ve been punished out of all proportion 
to the little bit of happiness it brought me. There’s no more 
miserable creature alive than I am.” 

“What interests me,” continued Krafft, in a matter-of-fact 
tone, “ is, how you came to choose so far afield from your par- 
ticular type. It’s well enough represented here.” 

She saw the folly of wasting herself upon him, and gave a 
deep sigh. Then, however, the same wild change as before came 
over her face. Stooping, she took his hand and fondled it. 

“Heinz! Now that you’re here, do one thing — only one — 
for me! Have pity on me! I’ve gone through so much — been 
so unhappy. Tell me — there’s only one thing I want to know. 
Where is he? Will he never come back? For you know. You 
must know. You have seen him.” 

She had sunk to her knees ; her head was bent over his hand ; 
she laid her cheek against it. Krafft considered her thoughtfully ; 
his eye dwelt with approval on the broad, slender shoulders, the 
lithe neck — all the sure grace of the crouching body. 

“ Will you do something for me, Lulu ? ” 

“ Anything!” 

“ Then let your hair down. 

He himself drew out the pins and combs that held it, and the 
black mass fell, and lay in wide, generous waves round face and 
neck. 

“ That’s the idea! Now go on.” 

Louise kissed his hand. “ Tell me; you must know.” 

“ But is it possible that still interests you ? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


506 

“ Oh, no! My life depends on it, that’s all. You are cruel 
and bad ; but still I can speak to you — for months now, I haven’t 
had a soul to speak to. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I cant 
go on living without him. I haven’t lived since he left me — not 
an hour! — Oh, you’re my last hope! ” 

“ You’ll have plenty of hopes in your life yet.” 

“ In those old days, you hated me, too. But don’t bear malice 
now. There’s nothing I won’t do for you, if you tell me. I’ll 
never speak to — never even think of you again.” 

“ I’m not so long-suffering.” 

“ Then you won’t tell me ? ” 

“ I didn’t say that.” 

She crushed his hand between hers. “ Here’s the chance you 
asked for — to save your friend ! Oh, won’t you understand ? ” 

An inward satisfaction, of which only he himself knew the 
cause, warmed Krafft through at seeing her prostrate before 
him. But as he continued to look at her, a thought crossed his 
mind, and quickly resolved, he laid his cigarette on the table, 
and put his hands, first on her head, amid the tempting con- 
fusion of her hair, which met them like a thick stuff pleasant 
to the touch, and from there to her shoulders, inclining her 
towards him. She looked up, and though her eyes were full 
of tears, her white face was alight in an instant with hope 
again, as he said : “ Would you do something else for me if I 
told you? ” 

She strained back, so that she might see his face. “ Heinz ! — 
what is it? ” And then, with a sudden gasp of comprehension: 
“ Oh, if that’s all ! — I will never see Maurice Guest again.” 

“ That’s not it.” 

“ What is it then ? ” 

“ Will you listen quietly? ” 

“Yes, yes.” She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. 
But he felt her trembling. 

He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously 
she jerked her head away, and, turning a dark red, stared in- 
credulously at him. Then she sprang to her feet. 

“Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there 
was a human spot in you I could get at! — Take your hands away 
— take them off me! Because I’ve had no one to speak to for 
so long: because I know you could understand if you would — 
Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hit her.” 

“ Gently, gently ! — You’re too good for such phrases.” 

“ I’m no different from other women. It’s only you — with 


MAURICE GUEST 


507 

your horrible thoughts of me. You! Why, you’re no more to 
me than the floor I stand on.” 

“ And matters are simplified by that very fact. — I can give 
you his address, Lulu.” 

“ Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you. — Go away ! ” 

“ And this,” said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, “ is how 
a woman listens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word 
at any time will bring me, if you change your mind.” 

One evening,, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert’s 
Cafe. The heavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of 
thaw — of slush and gloom ; and, on this particular night, a keen 
wind had risen, making the streets seem doubly cheerless. It 
was close on nine o’clock, and Seyffert’s was crowded with its 
usual guests — young people, who had escaped from more or less 
dingy rooms to the warmth and light of the cafe, where the 
yellow blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The 
billiard table in the centre was never free; those players whose 
turn had not yet come, or was over, stood round it, cigarette or 
large black cigar in hand, and watched the game. 

Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it 
was at a table for two, in a corner. A youth who had already 
eaten his supper, sat alone there, picking his teeth. Maurice 
took the opposite chair, and made his evening meal with a 
languid appetite. At the other side of the room was a large and 
boisterous party, whose leader was Krafft — Krafft in his most 
outrageous mood. Every other minute, his sallies evoked roars 
of laughter. Maurice refrained from glancing in that direction. 
When, however, his vis-a-vis got up and went away, he was 
startled from his conning of the afternoon paper by seeing 
Krafft before him. The latter, who carried his beer-mug in 
his hand, took the vacated seat, nodded and smiled. 

Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that 
they were being watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting 
down the newspaper, he wished his friend good-evening. 

“ I’ve something to say to you,” said Krafft without respond- 
ing, and, having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract 
the waiter’s attention. 

With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becom- 
ing one of his most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a 
deathly indifference, Maurice hung up his paper, and sat for- 
ward to listen. Crossing his arms on the table, Krafft began to 
speak, meanwhile fixing his companion with his eye. Maurice 


MAURICE GUEST 


508 

was at first too bewildered by what he heard to know to whom 
the words referred. Then, the colour mounted to his face; the 
nerves in his temples began to throb ; and his hand moved along 
the edge of the table, in search of something to which it could 
hold fast. — It was the first time the name of Louise had been 
mentioned between them — and in what a tone! 

“ Heinz ! ” he said at last ; his voice seemed not to be his own. 
“ How dare you speak of Miss Dufrayer like that! ” 

“Pardon! ” said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were 
aglow, his limpid eyes shone like stars. “ Do you mean Lulu? ” 

Maurice grew pale. “ Mind what you’re saying!” 

Krafft took a gulp of beer. “ Are you afraid of the truth ? — 
But just one word, and I’m done. You no doubt knew, as 
every one else did, that Lulu was Schilsky’s mistress. What you 
didn’t know, was this;” and now, without the least attempt at 
palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his 
lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise 
and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their 
relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of a woman’s 
unsatisfied fancy. 

Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, 
were checked off, Maurice understood; half rising from his 
chair, he struck Krafft a resounding blow in the face. He had 
intended to hit the mouth, but, his hand remaining fully open, 
caught on the cheek, and with such force that the delicate skin 
instantly bore a white imprint of all five fingers. 

Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what 
had happened; but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; 
and in a minute, the further occupants of the room had gath- 
ered round them, the billiard-players with their cues in their 
hands. Two waiters, napkin on arm, hastened up, and the 
proprietor came out from an inner room, and rubbed his hands. 

“ Meine Herren! Meine Herren! ” 

Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain 
from putting his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was 
very pale, stood staring, like a person in a trance, at the mark, 
now deep red, which his hand had left on his friend’s cheek. 
There was a solemn pause; all eyes were fixed on Krafft; and 
the stillness was only broken by the proprietor’s persuasive: 
“Meine Herren! Meine Herren /" 

In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he 
jauntily waved his hand to those pressing up behind; though one 
side of his face still blazed and burned. 


MAURICE GUEST 509 

“ Don’t allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The 
incident is closed — for the present, at least. My friend here was 
carried away by a momentary excitement. Kindly resume your 
seats, and act as if nothing had happened. I shall call him to 
account at my own convenience. — But just one moment, 
please ! ” 

The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a note- 
book, Krafft tore out one of the little pages, and, with his cus- 
tomary indolence of movement, wrote something on it. Then 
he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it 
to Maurice. 

Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to 
do; he also, for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which 
some one handed to him. He saw nothing of what went on — - 
nothing but the five outspread marks, which had run together 
so slowly. He had, however, enough presence of mind to do 
what was evidently expected of him; and, in the hush that still 
prevailed, he left the rafe. 

The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of 
the streets, which it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous 
gusts, which beat the gas-flames flat as soon as they reared 
themselves, and made them give a wavering, uncertain light. 
Not a soul was visible. But in the moment that he stood 
hesitating outside the brilliancy of the yellow blinds, the hubbub 
of voices burst forth again. He moved hastily away, and began 
to walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He 
did not shrink before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought 
his way forward, till he reached the woods. There he threw 
; himself face downwards on the first bench he came to. 

A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from 
the thousands of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which 
1 they had once hung, some invisible hand had set free thousands 
of odours, there mounted to him, as he lay, all that rich and 
humid earthiness that belongs to sunless places. And for a time, 
he was conscious of little else but this morbid fragrance. 

An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before 
a crowd of onlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their 
midst. From now on, he was an outcast from orderly society, 
was branded as one who -was not wholly responsible for his 
actions — he, Maurice Guest, "who had ever been so chary of 
committing himself. What made the matter seem still blacker, 
too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once been 
his intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think 


5io 


MAURICE GUEST 


of him again, without, at the same time, seeing the mark of 
his hand on Krafft’s cheek. If the blow had remained invisible, 
it might have been more easily forgotten; but he had seen it, 
as it were, taken shape before him. — Or, had it only been re- 
turned, it would have helped to lessen the weight of his present 
abasement — oh, he would have given all he had to have felt a 
return blow on his own face! Even the smallest loss of self- 
control on the part of Krafft would have been enough. But the 
latter was too proud to give himself away gratuitously: he 
preferred to take his revenge in the more unconventional fashion 
of leaving his friend to bear the ignominy alone. 

Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar 
thoughts. Only little by little did the tumult that had been 
roused in him abate. Then, and just the more vividly for the 
break in his memory, the gross words Krafft had said, came 
back to him. Recalling them, he felt an intense bitterness against 
Louise. She was the cause of all his sufferings ; were it not for 
her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her 
doing that he was compelled to part, bit by bit, with his self- 
respect. Not once, in all the months they had been together, 
had the smallest good come to him through her. Nothing but 
misery. 

Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go 
to her, and tax her with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her 
very face. She should suffer, too — and the foretasted anguish 
and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled all other feelings in 
him. 

He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, 
which had hung down over the bench, was wet and sticky 
from grasping handfuls of dead leaves. 

It was past eleven o’clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, 
at the sight of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow. 

“ What is it? What’s the matter? Where have you been? ” 

He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The 
loose masses of her hair, which had come unplaited, arrested 
his attention: he had never seemed to know before how bru- 
tally black it was. With his eyes fixed on it, he repeated what 
Krafft had told him. 

Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and 
watched him from under it. When he had finished, she said: 
“ So Heinz has raked up that old story again, has he? ” 

Maurice had expected — yes, what had he expected? — anger, 
perhaps, or denial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the 


MAURICE GUEST 


5ii 

almost impartial composure with which she listened to him. 
For he had not spared her a word. 

“ Is that all you’ve got to say?” he cried, suffocated with 
doubt. “ Then you . . . you admit it ? ” 

“Admit it! Maurice! Are you crazy? — to wake me up 
for this! It happened years ago! ” 

His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise 
half sat up in bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her 
nightgown was not buttoned; he saw to the waist a strip of 
the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a long black strand of 
her hair fell in and lay on it. 

“ You won’t tell me you didn’t know from the first there had 
been . . . something between Heinz and me ? ” she cried, 
roused to defend herself. — “And look here, Maurice, as he told 
you that, it’s my turn now. I’ll tell you why!” And sitting 
still more upright, she gave a reason which made him grasp 
the knob of the bed-post so fiercely that it came away in his 
hand. He threw it into a corner. 

“Louise! . . . you! to take such words on your tongue! 
Is there no shame left in you ? ” His throat was dry and 
narrow. 

“ Shame! You only mean the need for concealment. Before 
you had got me, there was no talk of shame.” 

“ Do you know what you’re saying? ” 

“Oh, that’s your eternal cry!” and, suddenly spurred to 
anger, she rose again. “ I know — yes, I know ! Do you think 
I’m a fool? Why must you alone be so innocent! Why should 
you alone not know that I was only jealous of a single person, 
and that was Krafft ? ” 

Maurice turned away. In the comparative darkness behind 
the screen, he sat down on the sofa, put his arms on the table, 
and his head on his arms. He was exhausted, and found he 
must have slept as he sat; for when he lifted his head again, 
the hands of the clock had moved forward by several hours. 


X 


One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared 
from Leipzig, and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was 
found in a secluded reach of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. 
Some workmen, tramping townwards soon after dawn, noticed 
a strip of light stuff twisted round a snag, which projected 
slightly above the surface of the water. It proved to be the 
skirt of her dress, which had been caught and held fast. Am- 
bulance and police were summoned, and the body was recovered 
and taken to the police-station. 

The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the 
number of those interested in his departure, and in Avery’s quick 
suicide, was so large that she several times had to repeat her 
lively account of the last visit he paid her. He had come 
in, one afternoon, and settling himself on the sofa, refused to 
be dislodged. As he was in one of his most ambiguous moods, 
she left him to himself, and went on with her work. 

On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands 
on her shoulders. 

“ Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry 
you wouldn’t have me.” 

“ Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me ! ” 

it was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that 
melted as it touched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her um- 
brella. As usual, however, he returned before he could have 
got half-way down the stairs, to say that he had changed his 
mind and would not take it. 

“ But you’ll get wet through.” 

“I don’t want your umbrella, I tell you. — Or have you 
two? ” 

“ No; but I’m not going out. — Oh, well, leave it then. And 
may you reap a frightful rheumatism ! ” 

As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the Rose 
of Sharon: she listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and 
that was the last she or anyone had heard of Krafft. The fol- 
lowing morning, his landlady found a note on her kitchen-table, 
instructing her to keep his belongings for four weeks. If, by 

512 


MAURICE GUEST 


5i3 


that time, they had not been claimed, she might sell them, and 
take the money obtained for herself. Only a few personal 
articles were missing, such as would be necessary for a hurried 
journey. — Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had 
never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to 
take leave of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also 
grateful to him for not pilfering her umbrella, which was silver- 
topped. All the same, there was something indecent about his 
behaviour. It showed how little he had, at heart, cared for 
any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised others, 
would treat them in this way, playing with them up to the last 
minute, as one plays with dolls or fools. 

Avery Hill was laid out in a small room adjoining the police- 
station. It was evening before the business of identification 
was over. Various members of the American colony had to 
give evidence, and the sendees of the consul were called into 
play; for there were countless difficulties, formalities and cere- 
monies attached to this death by one’s own hand in a foreign 
country. Before all the technical details were concluded, there 
were those who thought — and openly said so — that an in- 
tending suicide might cast a merciful thought on the survivors. 
Only Dove made no complaint. He had been one of the first 
to learn what had happened, and, in the days that followed, 
he ran to and fro, from one Bureau to another, receiving sig- 
natures, and witnessing them, bearing the whole brunt of surly 
Saxon officialdom on his own shoulders. 

Twenty-four hours later, it had been arranged that the body 
should be buried on the J ohannisfriedhof , and the consul was 
advised by cablegram to lay out the money for the funeral. 
Under the eyes of a police-officer and a young clerk from the 
consul’s office, Madeleine, assisted by Miss Jensen, went through 
the dead girl’s belongings, and packed them together. 

Miss Jensen kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary 
on the falsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at 
times, her natural kindness of heart asserted itself, to the con- 
fusion of her theories. 

“ Poor thing, poor young thing! ” she murmured, gazing at 
a pair of well-patched boots which she held in her hand. “ If 
only she had come to us! — and let us help her! ” 

“Help her?” echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was 
one of those who thought that the dead girl might have shown 
more consideration for her friends, standing, as they did, imme- 
diately before their Priif ungen. “ Could one help her ever hav- 


514 


MAURICE GUEST 


ing set eyes on that attractive scoundrel ? — And besides, it’s easy 
enough thinking afterwards, one might have been able to help, 
to do this and that. It’s a mistake. People don’t want help; 
and they don’t give you a thank-you for offering it. All they 
ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as they 
like.” 

As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once 
more to the subject of Krafft’s failings. 

“ I’ve known many men,” she said, “ one more credulously 
vain and stupid than another; for unless a man is engaged in 
satisfying his brute instincts, he can be twisted round the finger 
of any woman. But Mr. Krafft was the only one I’ve met, 
who didn’t appear to me to have a single good impulse.” 

The big woman’s high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine. 

“You’re quite wrong there,” she said more snappily than 
before. “ Heinz had as many good impulses as anyone else. 
But he had reduced the concealing of them to a fine art. He 
was never happier than when he had succeeded in giving a 
totally false impression of himself. Take me for this, for that! 
— 'just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone 
to a dog: there! that’s good enough for you. No one knew 
Heinz: each of us knew a little bit of him, and thought it was 
all there was to know. — He never showed a good impulse : that 
is as much as saying that he swarmed with them. And no 
doubt he would have considered that, with regard to you, he 
had been entirely successful. You have the idea of him he 
meant you to have.” 

“ He was never her lover,” said Louise with a studied care- 
lessness. 

Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone 
of bravado in which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was 
stung to retaliation. 

“ How do you know? ” 

“ Well, if you wish to hear — from his own lips.” 

“ Do you mean to say you’ve spoken to Heinz about things 
of that kind ? — discussed his relations with other women ? ” 

“ Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had 
ever heard of you ? ” 

He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The 
events of the past week had closed over his head as two waves 
close over a swimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the 
night on which he had left his whilom friend the mark of his 


MAURICE GUEST 


5i5 

spread fingers as a parting gift, he had ceased to care greatly 
about anything. 

Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery’s 
suicide and Krafft’s departure touched him lightly. For the 
girl, he had never cared. As soon, though, as he heard that 
Krafft had disappeared, he turned out his pockets for the 
scrap of paper Heinz had given him that evening in the cafe. 
But it threw no light on what had happened. It was merely 
an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make 
no more of it than the words: Klostergasse 12. He resolved 
to go through the street of that name in the afternoon; but, 
when the time came, he forgot about it, and it was not till next 
morning that he carried out his intention. There was, however, 
nothing to be learned ; number twelve was a gunsmith’s shop, 
and at his hesitating inquiry, if anything were known there of 
a music-student called Krafft, the owner of the shop looked at 
him as if he were a lunatic, and answered rudely: was the Herr 
under the impression that the shop was an information Bureau? 

Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, 
she said that she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in 
vain to dissuade her. 

“ It’s a perverse thing to do,” he cried. “ You didn’t care 
a fig for the girl when she was alive. But now she can’t for- 
bid it, you go and stare at her, out of nothing but curiosity.” 

“How do you know whether I cared for her or not?” 
Louise threw at him: she was tying on her veil before the 
glass. “ Do you think I tell you everything? — And as for your 
‘ perverse,’ it’s the same with all I ever do. You have made it 
your business always to find my wishes absurd.” She took up 
her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff with 
them. “ In this case, it doesn’t concern you in the least. I 
don’t ask you to come. I want to go alone.” 

The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-as- 
sertive was she. There was an air of bravado in all she did, at 
this time — as in the matter of her determination to go to 
the dead-house — and she hurt him, with reckless cruelty, when- 
ever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemed only to open 
to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with an ironic 
contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. 
At moments, she began almost to look ugly to him ; but it was 
a dangerous ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever 
been. Then, he knew that she was not too good for him, 
nor he for her, nor either of them for the world they lived in. 


MAURICE GUEST 


516 

They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very 
cold day, and Louise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose 
enticingly. The attention she attracted was to Maurice like 
gall to a wound. 

There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the 
dead. A small coin changed hands, and a man in uniform 
opened the door. 

The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and 
the body was swathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It 
lay on a long, projecting shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the 
wall at its head. On the opposite side of the room, on a similar 
shelf, was another shrouded figure — the body of a working- 
man, found that morning on the outskirts of the town, with an 
empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid by its side. The 
Leichenfrau , the public layer-out of the dead, told them this; 
it was she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery’s face in 
order that they might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked 
woman, and her vivid colouring was thrown into relief by the 
long black cloak and the close-fitting, black poke-bonnet that she 
wore. Maurice, for whom the dead as such had no attraction, 
turned from his contemplation of the stark-stretched figure on 
the shelf, to watch the living woman. The exuberance of her 
vitality had something almost insultant in the presence of these 
two rigid forms, from whose faces the colour had fled for ever. 
Her eyes were alert like those of a bird ; her voice and move- 
ments were loud and bustling. In thought he compared her to 
a carrion-crow. It was this woman’s calling to live on the 
dead ; she hastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inani- 
mate bodies, whose dignity had departed from them. He won- 
dered idly whether she gloated over the announcements of fresh 
deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did she talk of good sea- 
sons and of slack seasons, and look forward to the spread of 
contagious disease? — Well, at least, she throve on her trade, 
as a butcher thrives by continually handling meat. 

Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood 
gazing at it, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of 
feeling. The Leichenfrau , having finished tying up a basket, 
crossed the room and joined her. 

“ Eine schone Leiclie! ” she said, and nodded, appreciating the 
fact that a stranger should admire what was partly her own 
handiwork. 

It was true; Avery’s face looked as though it were modelled 
in wax. She had not been in the water for more than half an 


MAURICE GUEST 


517 


hour, had said the doctor, not long enough to be disfigured in 
any way. Only her hair remained dank and matted, and, al- 
though it was laid straight out over the bolster, it would proba- 
bly never be quite dry again. No matter, continued the woman ; 
on the morrow would come the barber, a good friend of hers, 
to dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, and 
other heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make 
a good job of it, so skilled was he: he had all the latest fash- 
ions in hair-dressing at his finger-ends. The face itself was 
as placid as it had been in life; the lids were firmly closed — no 
peeping or squinting here — and the lips met and rested on each 
other round and full. Seen like this, it now became evident 
that his face was one of those which are, all along, intended for 
death — intended, that is, to lie waxen and immobile, to show 
to best advantage. In life, there had been too marked a dis- 
crepancy between the extreme warmth of the girl’s colouring 
and the extreme immobility of her expression. Now that the 
blood had, as it were, been drained away to the last drop, now 
that temples and nostrils had attained transparency, the fine 
texture of the skin and the beauty of the curves of lips and 
chin were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the Leichen - 
frau babbled on, was convulsively closed, and could not be un- 
done; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, and 
displayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were 
clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery ap- 
peared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as 
living sleep never attains to — the very epitome of repose. It 
seemed as if her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen 
force; and, in her presence, the feeling gained ground in one, 
that it was worth enduring much, to arrive at a rest of this 
kind at last. 

" Ja, ja ” said the woman, and rearranged the covering. “ It’s 
a pleasure to handle such a pretty corpse. That one there, 
now,” — with her chin she pointed to the other figure, and made 
a face of disgust. “ Ein ekliger Kerll There was nothing to 
be done with him.” 

“ Let me see what he’s like,” begged Louise. 

“ It’s an ugly sight,” said the woman. However, she pulled 
the sheet down, and so far that not only the face, but also a 
part of the hairy black breast was visible. 

Louise shuddered, yet the very horror of the thing fascinated 
her, and she plied the woman with questions about the workings 
of the agonising poison that had been swallowed. After one 


MAURICE GUEST 


5iS 

hasty glance, Maurice had turned away, and now stood staring 
out of the high, barred window into a gloomy little courtyard, 
For him, the air of the room was hard to breathe, owing to the 
faint, yet unmistakable odour, which even the waxen figure of 
the girl had begun to exhale ; and he marvelled how Louise, who 
was so sensitive, could endure it. 

Outside, both drew long breaths of the cold, evening air, and 
Louise bought a bunch of violets, which she pressed to nose and 
mouth. 

“ Horrible, horrible! ” she said, at the same time raising her 
shoulders in their heavy cape. “ Oh, that man ! — I shall never 
forget his face.” 

“What do you go to such places for? You have only your- 
self to thank for it.” He, too, was aware that a needless and 
repellent memory had been added to their lives. 

“ Oh, everything’s my own fault — I know that. You are 
never to blame for anything ! ” 

“ Did I ask you to go there? — did I? ” 

But she only laughed in reply, through and through hostile 
to him; and they walked for some distance in silence. 

“ Why are you going this way ? ” he asked suspiciously, when 
she turned into a street that led in the opposite direction to 
that which they should have taken. 

“ I’m not going home. I couldn’t sit alone in the dark with 
that . . . that thing before my eyes.” 

“Who asked you to sit alone? — Where are you going?” 

“ I don’t know . . . where I like.” 

“ That’s no answer.” 

“And if I don’t choose to answer? — I don’t want you. I 
want to be alone. I’m sick of your perpetual bad-temper, and 
your eternal self-righteousness.” 

He laughed, just as she had done. The sound enraged her. 

“ Oh, the dead at least are at peace ! ” she cried. 

“Yes! . . . why don’t you say it? You wish you were 
lying there — at peace from me ! ” 

“ Why should I say what you know so well ? ” 

“ Go and do it then ! — who’s hindering you ? ” 

“ For you? — kill myself for you? ” 

One word gave another ; they pressed forward, in the falling 
dusk, like two distraught creatures, heedless of the notice they 
attracted, or of who should hear their bitter words. And 
because their gestures were, to some extent, regulated by the 
conventions of the street, because they could not face each other 


MAURICE GUEST 


5i9 


with flaming eyes, and throw out hands and arms to emphasise 
what they said, their words were all the more cruel. Louise 
made straight for home now ; she escaped into the house, 
banging the door. Maurice strode down the street, in a tumult 
of resentment, vowing never to return. 

Avery Hill was buried the following afternoon. Maurice 
went to the funeral, because, since he had seen the dead girl’s 
body at the mortuary, he had been invaded by a kind of 
pity for her, lying alone at the mercy of barber and Leichenfrau. 
And so, towards three o’clock, he fought his way against a cut- 
ting wind to the Johannisfriedhof. 

A mere handful of people stood round the grave. In addition 
to the English chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were 
present Dove, two Americans, and a young clerk from the 
consul’s office, who was happy to be associated, in any fashion, 
with the English residents. It was the coldest day of that 
winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind, which cut 
like the blade of a knife, and forced stinging tears from the 
eyes. This wind had dried the frozen surface of the ground 
to the impenetrability of iron; loose earth crumbled before 
it like powder. Grass and shrubs had shrivelled, blighted by 
its breath ; the bare trees were sooty-black against the sky. So 
intense was the prevailing sensation of icy dryness that it seemed 
as if the earth would never again know moisture. People’s faces 
grew as wizened as the skins of old apples; throats and lungs 
were choked by the grey dust, which whirled through the 
streets, and made breathing an effort. 

In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shel- 
ter of the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept 
as over the surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the 
extraordinary difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the 
earth that had been thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen 
lumps. These two men stood in the background while the 
service was going on, and stamped their feet and beat their 
hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep the blood 
flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, with 
sunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red 
and white comforter over his surplice ; the five young men pulled 
down the ear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn 
shoulders, burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chap- 
lain gabbled the few necessary prayers: they were inaudible to 
his hearers ; for the rushing wind carried them straight over his 


520 


MAURICE GUEST 


shoulder into space. He was not more than a bare ten minutes 
over the service. Then the diggers came forward to lower the 
coffin. Owing to the stiffness of their hands, the ropes slid 
from their grasp, and the coffin fell forward into the hard yellow 
grave with a bump. The young men took the obligatory hand- 
fuls of earth, and struck the side of the coffin with them as 
gently as possible. With the last word still on his lips, the chap- 
lain shut his book and fled; and the rest hastily dispersed. 
Maurice shook off the young clerk, who was murmuring unin- 
telligible words of sympathy, and left the cemetery in the wake 
of the two Americans, for whom a droschke was in waiting to 
take them back to the town. 

“Waal, I’m sort o’ relieved that wasn’t my funeral,” he 
heard one of them say. 

He walked at full speed to restore his famished circulation. 
When he was in the heart of the town again, he entered a cafe ; 
and there he remained, with his elbows on the little marble 
table, letting the scene he had just come through pass once 
more before his mind. There had been something grotesquely 
indecent about the haste of every one concerned: the chaplain, 
gabbling like a parrot, out of regard for the safety of his own 
lungs; the hurry-skurry of the diggers, whose thoughts were 
no doubt running on the size of their gratuities; the openly 
expressed satisfaction of the few mourners, when they were 
free to hurry off again, as in hurry they had arrived. Not 
one present but had counted the minutes, at the expiry of which 
the dead girl would be consigned to her appointed hole. What 
an ending! All the talent, the incipient genius, that had been 
in her, thrust away with the greatest possible despatch, buried 
out of sight in the hideously hard, cold earth. Snuffed out like 
a candle, and with as little ceremony, was all the warm, com- 
plex life that had made up this one, throbbing bit of humanity: 
for what it had been, not a soul alive now cared. And 
what a night, too, for one’s first night underground! Brr! — At 
the thought of it, he drank another cup of coffee, and a fiery, 
stirring liqueur. But the sense of depression clung to him, and, 
as he walked home, he regretted the impulse that had led him 
to attend the funeral. For all the melancholy of valediction w T as 
his. The dead girl was free — and he had a sudden vision of 
her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with the look of super- 
human peace on her face. Over the head of this, he was sar- 
castic at his own expense. For though she zuere being treated 
like a piece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath 


MAURICE GUEST 


521 


the screening lid, she continued to sleep, tranquil, undisturbed. 
On the other hand, how absurd it was that he, who had cared 
little for her in life, should in this wise constitute himself her 
only mourner! And, mentally and physically, he now jerked 
himself to rights, and even began to whistle, as he went, in an 
attempt to seem at harmony with himself. But the tune that 
rose to his lips was Krafft’s song, The Rose of Sharon, and he 
straightway broke off, in disgust and confusion. 

In his room, as soon as he had struck a match to light the 
lamp, he saw that a letter was lying on the table. By the 
gradual spread of the light, he made out that it bore an Austrian 
stamp, and directly he took it in his hand, he recognised the 
writing. Heinz! — it was from Heinz! He tore open the 
envelope with unsteady fingers; what could Heinz have to 
write to him about? Instinctively, he connected it in some 
way with the events of the afternoon. But it was a very brief 
note, covering hardly a page of the paper. Standing beside the 
lamp, Maurice held the sheet in the circle of light, and ran his 
eye over the few lines. He took them in, in a flash, that is to 
say, he read them automatically; but their sense did not pene- 
trate his brain. He tried again, and still he could not grasp 
what they meant ; still again, and slowly, word by word, till he 
could have repeated them by heart; but always without getting 
at their inner meaning. Then, however, and all of a sudden, 
as if some inner consciousness had understood them, and now 
gave bodily warning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, 
and he was forced to sit down. Sitting, he continued to 
stare at the page of writing before him, with contracted pupils. 
He commenced to read again, and even said the first line or two 
of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him. But the paper 
fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flame of the 
lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with it. His 
head fell forward, and lay on his hands, and on the rustling 
sheet of paper. 

“ God in Heaven ! ” 

He heard himself say it, and was even conscious of the fact 
that, like every mortal in the throes of a strong emotion, he, too, 
called on God. 

A long and profound silence ensued. It went on and on, 
persisted, was about to become eternal, when it was rudely 
broken by the sound of a child’s cry. He raised his head. The 
walls swam round him: in spite of the coldness of the night 
and the fact that the room was unheated, he was clammy with 


522 


MAURICE GUEST 


perspiration. The skin of his face, too, had a peculiar, drawn 
feeling, as if it were a mask that was too tight for it. He 
shivered. Then his eye fell on the letter lying open on the 
table. Without a moment’s hesitation, without waiting even to 
put the lamp out, he seized it, and went headlong from the 
house. 

But he was strangely unequal to exertion. He felt a craving 
for stimulant, and entering a wine-shop, drank a couple of 
cognacs. His strength came back to him; people moved out 
of his way; he had energy enough to climb the stair, and to go 
through the business of unlocking the door. 

At his abrupt entrance, Louise concealed something in a 
drawer, and turned the key on it. But Maurice was too self- 
absorbed to heed her action, or consciously to hear her exclama- 
tion at his haggard appearance. He shut the door, crossed to 
where she was standing, and, without speaking, pulled her 
nearer to the lamp. By its light, he scanned her face with a 
desperate eagerness. 

“ What is it? What’s the matter? ” 

At the sound of her voice, the tension of the past hour 
relaxed. He let his head fall on her shoulder, and shut his 
eyes, swaying as she swayed beneath his weight. 

“Forgive me! . . . forgive me!” 

“ You’ve been drinking, I think.” But she held still under 
his grasp. 

“Yes, I have. Louise! . . . tell me it’s a horrible mistake. 
Help me, you must help me ! ” 

“ How can I help you, if you won’t tell me what the matter 
is?” She believed him to be half drunk, and spoke as to a 
drunken person, without meaning much. 

“ Yes, yes ... I will. Only give me time.” 

But he postponed beginning. Leaning more heavily on her, 
he pressed his lips to the stuff of her dress. He would have 
liked to sleep, just where he was; indeed, he was invaded by the 
desire to sleep, never again to unclose his eyes. But she grew 
restless, and tried to draw her shoulder away. Then he looked 
at her, and a feverish stream of words, half self-recriminative, 
half in self-defence, burst from his lips. But they had little 
to do with the matter in hand, and were incomprehensible to 
her. “ It has been a terrible nightmare. And only you can 
drive it away.” As he spoke, he looked, with a sudden suspi- 
cion, right into her eyes. But they neither faltered nor grew 
uneasy. 


MAURICE GUEST 


523 


“ It will turn out to be nothing, I know,” she said coldly. 
“ You’re always devising some new way of tormenting me.” 

Her words roused him. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew 
from it Krafft’s letter. “ Is that nothing? Read it and tell 
me. I found it at home on my table.” 

Louise took it with unmoved indifference. But directly she 
saw whose handwriting it was, her face grew grave and at- 
tentive. She looked back from the envelope to him, to see 
what he was thinking, to learn how much he knew. In spite 
of his roughness there was a hungry, imploring look in his eyes, 
an appeal to her to put him out of misery, and in the way he 
desired. And, as always, before such a look, her own face 
hardened. 

“ Read it! What he dares to write to me!” 

Slowly, as if it were impossible for her to hurry, she drew 
the sheet from the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As 
she did so, she half turned away. But not so far that he could 
not see the dark, disfiguring blood stain her neck and blotch 
her cheek — even her ear grew crimson. She read deliberately, 
lingering over each word, but the instant she had finished, she 
crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to the other end of 
the room. 

“ The scoundrel ! ” she cried. “ Oh, the scoundrel ! ” Clench- 
ing her two hands, she pressed them to her face. 

Maurice did not say a word ; he hardly dared to draw breath, 
for fear some sign of her guilt might escape him. Leaning 
against the table, he marked each tell-tale quiver of lip or eye- 
iid. 

“ The blackguard ! ” she cried again, shaken by rage. “ If 
I had him here, I’d strangle him with my own hands!” 

He gloated over her anger. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. 
“ I, too . . . could kill him.” 

There was a pause, in which each followed out a possible 
means of revenge. 

“ Now you see,” he said. “ When I got home — when I 
found that — 1 thought I should go mad.” 

Reminded thus, of his share in the matter, Louise turned 
her head, and considered him. Her face was tense. 

“ Forgive me ! ” said Maurice, and held out his hands to her. 

She gave him another look of the same kind. “ / forgive 
you f What for?” 

“ Because . . . since I got it, I’ve been thinking vile things.” 

“ Oh, that! ” She moved away, and gave a curt laugh, which 


524 


MAURICE GUEST 


met him like a stab. But she had no consideration for him: 
she had only room in her mind for Krafft’s treachery. “ I could 
kill him,” she said again. “Don’t. . . . Leave me alone!” 
— this to Maurice, who was trying to take her hand. “ Don’t 
touch me!” 

“Not touch you! — why not?” In an instant his softness 
passed over into suspicion : it was like a dry pile that had waited 
for the match. “ I not touch you ? ” he repeated. “ Do you 
want to make me believe that what he says there is true ? ” 

“ Believe what you like.” 

“ But that’s just what I won’t do. Turn here! Look me in 
the face! Now tell me it’s a lie.” 

She struggled to free her hands. “ You hurt me, Maurice! 
Let me go ! ” 

“Be careful! — or I shall hurt you more than this. Now 
answer me!” 

“You! — with your ridiculous heroics! Be careful your- 
self!” 

His grip of her grew tighter. 

“ For your precious peace of mind then — 'that you may not 
be kept in suspense : what Heinz says there is — true ! ” 

He did not at once grasp what she meant. He stood staring 
stupidly at her, still clutching her hands. With a determined 
effort, Louise wrenched them away. 

“Don’t you hear what I say? It’s true — all true — every 
word of it ! ” 

At the cruel repetition, he went pale, and after that, seemed 
to go on growing paler, until his face was like a sheet of paper. 
A horrible silence ensued ; neither dared to let go of the other’s 
eyes. 

“ My God! ” he said at last. “ My God! ” 

He sat down at the table, and buried his face in his arms. 
Louise did not move; she stood waiting, her hands, which were 
red and sore, pressed against her sides. And as minutes passed, 
and he did not stir, she began in a vacant way to count the ticks 
of the clock. 

If he did not speak soon, did not go on with what had to 
come, and get it over, she would be forced to scream. A scream 
was mounting in her throat. 

“When was it? . . . How? . . . Why?” 

She made no answer. 

He straightened himself, holding on to the table. “And if 
that letter hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have told me ? ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


525 

Again she did not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting 
her inability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous de- 
fiance. 

“Why did you tell me? Did I need to know?’* he cried, 
loudly, and, in the confines of the room, his voice had the force 
of a shout. As she still remained dumb, he leaned across the 
table and actually shouted at her. “Any more? — are there any 
more? He won’t have been the only one. Tell me, I say! 
Good God ! Don’t you hear me ? ” The arteries in his temples 
were beating like two separate hearts. As nothing he said would 
make her open her lips, he snatched up her hands again, and 
dragged her a few steps forward — this, to prove to himself that 
he had at least bodily power over her. “ How dare you stand 
there and say it’s true! You brazen, shameless ! ” 

She thought he was going to strike her, and moved her head 
quickly to one side. The movement did not escape him; he 
was amazed at it, and horrified by it. “ You’re afraid of me, 
are you? You expect to be beaten, when you make a confession 
of that sort ? ” And as she kept her head bent, in sus- 
pense, he shouted: “ Very well, you shall have something to be 

afraid of . . . you ! ” and lifting his hand, he struck her 

a blow on the shoulder. It was given with force, and she sank 
to the floor, where she lay in a heap, screening her face with 
her arm. The first taste of his greater strength was like the 
flavour of blood to a beast of prey. In her mind, she might defy 
him, physically he was her master; and he struck her, again and 
again. But he did not wring any sound from her. She lay face 
downwards, and let the blows fall. 

When his first onslaught of rage had spent itself, a glimmer- 
ing of reason returned to him. He staggered to his feet, and 
looked down with horror at the prostrate figure. “ My God, 
what am I doing? — what have I done? ” A sudden fear swept 
through him that he had killed her. 

But now, for the first time, she spoke. “ It’s true ! ” he 
heard her say. 

At these words, the desire actually to kill her was so over- 
whelming that he moved precipitately away, and, in order not 
to see her, pressed his smarting hand to his eyes. But in 
the greater clearness of thought this shutting off of exter- 
nals brought with it, the ultimate meaning of what she had 
done was revealed to him; he saw red through his closed lids, 
and, going back to her, he struck her anew. The knowledge 
that, under her dressing-gown, she had nothing on but a thin 


526 MAURICE GUEST 

nightgown, gave him pleasure; he felt each of the blows fall 
full and hard on her firm flesh. 

From time to time, she turned her face to cry: “ It’s true 
... it is true ! ” deliberately inciting him to continue. 

But the moment came when his arm sank powerless to his 
side, when, if his life had depended on it, he could not have 
struck another blow. With difficulty, he rose to his feet; and 
such was the apathy that came over him, that it was all he 
could do to drag himself to the sofa. Once there, he leaned 
back and closed his eyes. 

For half an hour or more, neither of them stirred. Then, 
when she understood that he had done, that he was not coming 
back to her, Louise pulled herself into a sitting position, and 
from there to her feet. She could hardly stand; her head swam; 
not an inch of her body but ached and stung. Her exaltation 
had left her now; she began to feel sick, and, going over to 
the bed, she fell heavily upon it. 

Maurice heard her movements; but so incapable did he feel 
of further effort that he remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A 
new sound roused him: she was shivering, and with such vio- 
lence that the bedstead was shaken. After a crucial struggle 
with himself, he rose, and crossed the room. She was lying out- 
side the bedclothes. He pulled off an eider-down quilt, and 
spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were round her, all 
the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he 
did not remove them, but, kneeling down beside the bed, pressed 
his face to the quilt, and to the warm body below. 

And so the night wore away. 


XI 


Throughout February, and the greater part of March, the 
Hauptpriif ungen were held in the Conservatorium : twice a 
week, from six to eight o’clock in the evening, the concert hall 
was crammed with an eager crowd. To these concerts, the 
outside public was admitted, the critics were invited, and the 
performances received notices in the newspapers ; in short, 
the outgoing student was, for the first time, treated like a real 
debutant. Concerted music was accompanied by the full 
orchestra; the large gallery that ran round the hall was opened 
up; and the girls, whose eager faces hung over its edge, were 
more brightly decked than usual, in ribbons and laces. Some 
of those who stepped down the platform seemed thoroughly 
to relish their first taste of publicity; others, on the contrary, 
were awkward and abashed, and did not venture to notice the 
encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players 
as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who 
were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely 
escaped a total fiasco. 

The success of the year was Dove, in his performance of 
Chopin’s Concerto in E minor. Dove’s unshakable self-pos- 
session was here of immense value to him. Not a note was 
missed, not a turn slurred; the runs and brilliant passage-work 
of the concerto left his fingers like showers of pearls; his 
touch had the necessary delicacy, and, in addition to this, his 
reading was quite a revelation to his friends in the matter of 
temperament. It is true that Schwarz prohibited any undigni- 
fied display of the emotional side of Chopin; the interpretation 
had to be on classical lines; but even the most determined 
opponents of Schwarz’s method were forced to acknowledge 
that Dove made no mean show of the poetic contents of the 
music. The master himself, in his imperturbable way — he 
chose to act as if, all along, he had had this surprise for people 
up his sleeve — the master was in transports. His stern face 
wore an almost genial expression ; he smiled, and talked loudly, 
and, when the performance was over, hurried to and fro, full 
of importance, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, 
with a fine shade of reserve. Dove’s fellow-pupils were enrap- 
tured for Schwarz’s sake ; for, undeniably, the master’s numbers 

527 


MAURICE GUEST 


528 

this year were poor, compared with those of other teachers. It 
behoved the remainder to make the most of this isolated 
triumph; they did so, and were entertained by Schwarz at a 
special dinner, where many healths were drunk. 

Those who had “ made their Friifung ” as the phrase ran, 
were, as a rule, glad 4:o leave Leipzig when the ordeal was 
behind them. But Dove, who, on the day following his per- 
formance, when his name was to be read in the newspapers 
accompanied by various epithets of praise, had proposed and 
been accepted, and was this time returning to England a sol- 
emnly engaged man — 'Dove waited a week for his fiancee and 
her family, who had not been prepared for so sudden a move. 
He was the man of the hour. As a response to the flattering 
notices, he had called on all his critics, and been received by 
several; and he could hardly walk a street-length, without run- 
ning the gauntlet of some belated congratulation. Schwarz had 
spoken seriously to him about prosecuting his studies for a 
further year, with the not impossible prospect of a performance 
in the Gewandhaus at the end of it; but Dove had laid before 
his master the reasons why this could not be : he was no longer 
a free man ; there were now other wishes to be consulted in addi- 
tion to his own. Besides, if the truth must be told, Dove had 
higher aims, and these led him imperatively back to England. 

Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her last 
performance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. 
She had long ago given up making adventurous schemes for 
storming America: that had merely been her contribution to 
the romance of the place. Now she was hastening away to 
spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due at the 
school to which she was returning till the end of April ; and, in 
Paris, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, 
to rub off what she called “ German thoroughness.” She, too, 
had made a highly successful exit, though without creating a 
furore like Dove. Since all she did was well done, it was 
not possible for her to be a surprise to anyone. 

And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was 
over, the last afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went 
to the railway station to make arrangements about her lug- 
gage. On her way home, she entered Klemm’s music-shop, 
where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one and 
another. When she emerged again, the town had assumed that 
spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old 
gabled streets so attractive. 


MAURICE GUEST 


529 


For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret 
at having to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, 
her years of study; but she was now quite ready to advance, 
curious to attack the future, and to dominate that also. Still, 
the dusk on the familiar streets inclined her to feel sentimental. 
“ This time to-morrow, I’ll be hundreds of miles away,” she 
said to herself, “ and probably shall never see the old place 
again.” As she walked, she looked back upon her residence 
there — already somewhat in the light of a remembrance — weigh- 
ing what it had been worth to her. Part of it was intimately 
associated with Maurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. 
Of late he had passed out of her life ; she had been too busy to 
think of him. Now, however, that she was at the end of this 
period, the fancy seized her to see him again; and she took a 
resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in her for some 
time. 

“ I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” she reasoned. “ No one will 
know. And even if they do, I’m leaving, and it won’t matter.” 

And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked 
up her steps in the direction of the Braustrasse — a street which 
she disliked, and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had 
lived in a better neighbourhood, things might have gone better 
with him, she mused ; for Madeleine was a staunch believer in 
the influence of surroundings, and could not, for instance, under- 
stand a person who lived in dirt and disorder having any but 
a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door to door, scan- 
ning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward and to 
one side, like a bird’s. As she ascended the stair, she raised her 
skirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased. . 

Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at 
Madeleine with distrust. 

“ No, he’s not,” she replied. “ And what’s more, I couldn’t 
say, if you were to pay me, when he will be.” 

But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of 
any landlady alive. “Why? Is he so irregular?” she asked. 
She had placed her foot in the opening of the door, and now, 
by a skilful movement, inserted herself bodily into the passage. 

Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: 
“Well, if you like to wait!” and point out the room. She 
followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her hands on 
her apron. 

“ Are you a friend of his, may I ask ? ” she inquired. 

“Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think 


530 MAURICE GUEST 

Ed be here if I weren’t? ” said Madeleine, looking her up and 
down. 

“ Why I want to know? ” repeated Frau Krause, and tossed 
her head. “ Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any 
friends left, they ought to know how he’s going on — that’s why, 
Fraiilein! ” 

“ How going on ? ” queried Madeleine with undisturbed cool- 
ness, and looked round her for a chair. 

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause 
said behind her hand : “ It’s my opinion there’s a woman in the 
case.” 

“ You don’t need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret,” 
answered Madeleine drily. “ There is a woman, and there 
she sits, as you no doubt very well know.” As she spoke, she 
pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of 
the piano. 

“ I thought as much,” exclaimed the landlady. “ I thought 
as much. And a bad, bold face it is, too.” 

“ Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is 
he in debt to you ? ” Madeleine continued her interrogatory. 

“ Well, I can’t just say that,” replied the woman, with 
what seemed a spice of regret. “ He’s paid up pretty regular 
till now — though of course one never knows how long he’ll keep 
on doing it. But it goes against my heart to see a young man, 
who might be one’s own son, acting as he does. When he first 
came here, there wasn’t a decenter young man anywhere than 
Herr Guest — if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much 
of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more 
heed for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that 
had to live with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed 
day. And now there isn’t a lazier, more cantankerous fellow 
in the place. You can’t please him anyhow. He never gives 
you a civil word. He doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat, and he’s 
getting so thin that his clothes just hang on him.” 

“Is he drinking?” interrupted Madeleine in the same mat- 
ter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable 
offence. 

“ Well, I can’t just say that,” answered Frau Krause. “ Not 
but what it mightn’t be better if he was. It’s the ones as don’t 
drink who are the hard ones to get on with, in my experience. 
Young gentlemen who like their liquor, are of the good- 
natured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young fellow 
here ” 


MAURICE GUEST 


53i 


“ But I don’t see in the least what you’ve got to complain 
of ! ” said Madeleine. “ He pays you for the room, and you 
no doubt have free use of it. — A very good bargain ! ” 

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recog- 
nising that she had met her match in this sharp-tongued young 
lady, curbed her temper, and launched out into the history of 
a former lodger. 

It was a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single win- 
dow. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood 
a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. 
Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, 
man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, 
and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against 
the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the 
door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the 
iron stove. Everything was of an extreme shabbiness : the stuff- 
ing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet 
were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few 
books were ranged in line on the bureau — that was all that 
had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was 
like a room that had never properly been lived in. 

While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was 
heard in the front door, and Frau Krause, interrupted in her 
story, had just time to tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: 
“ Here he is! ” and dart out of the room. Not so promptly, 
however, but what Maurice saw where she came from. Made- 
leine heard them bandying words in the passage. 

The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, enter- 
ing hotly, threw his hat on the table. He did not perceive 
his visitor till it was too late. 

“ Madeleine! You here! ” he exclaimed in surprise and em- 
barrassment. “ I beg your pardon. I didn’t see you,” and he 
made haste to recover his hat. 

“ Yes, don’t faint, it’s I, Maurice. — But what’s the matter? 
Why are you so angry with the person? Does she pry on 
you ? ” 

“ Pry! ” he echoed, and his colour deepened. “Pry’s not 
the word for it. She ransacks everything I have. I never 
come home but what I find she has overhauled something, 
though I’ve forbidden her to enter the room.” 

“Why don’t you — or rather, why didn’t you move? It’s 
not much of a place, I’m sure.” 

“ Move?” he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as 


532 


MAURICE GUEST 


he spoke, he looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had 
hung his coat and hat on a peg, and now came forward to the 
table. “Move?” he said once again, and prolonged the 
word as though the channel of thought it opened up was new 
to him. 

“ Good gracious, yes ! — If one’s not satisfied with one’s 
rooms, one moves, that’s all. There’s nothing strange about 
it.” 

He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and 
was about to draw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter 
that was lying on the lowered flap of the bureau. In patent 
agitation, and without excusing himself, he seized it and tore 
it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the letter 
through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it into a 
dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf. 

“ No bad news, I hope? ” 

He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. “That 
depends on how you look at it, Madeleine,” he said, and 
laughed in an unpleasant manner. 

After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring 
at the scraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she 
waited. Then she saw herself forced to recall him to the 
fact of her presence. 

“Could you spare me a little attention now?” she asked. 
At her words, he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought 
his wandering thoughts home. “ I can’t sit here for ever you 
know,” she added. 

“ I beg your pardon.” He came up to the table, and took 
the chair he had previously had his hand on. “ The fact is 
. . . I Can I do anything for you, Madeleine?” 

“For me? Oh, dear, no! — You are surprised to find me 
here, no doubt! But as I’m leaving to-morrow morning, I 
thought I’d run up and say good-bye to you — that’s all. A 
case of Mohammed and the mountain, you see.” 

“Leaving? To-morrow?” 

“ Yes. — Goodness, there’s nothing wonderful in that, is 
there? Most people do leave some time or other, you know.” 

His reply was inaudible. “ It was very good of you to look 
me up,” he threw in as an afterthought. 

Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her 
lips, had chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had 
laid on the table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in 
spite of herself by the uncared-for condition of the nails. These 


MAURICE GUEST 


533 


were bitten, and broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware 
of her intent gaze, looked down to see what it was at, hastily 
withdrew his hands, and hid them in his pockets. 

“ This is the first time I’ve been in your den, you know,” 
she said abruptly. “ Really, Maurice, you might have done 
better. I don’t know how you’ve managed to put up with it 
so long.” 

“ My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live 
in a palace?” 

“A palace? — absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seven- 
teen marks for this hole. Well, I could have found you any 
number of better places for the same money — if you had come 
to me.” 

“ You’re very kind. But it has done me well enough.” 

“ So it appears.” 

Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking 
up some neutral subject. “ Are those your people? ” she asked, 
and nodded at the photograph of a family-group, which stood 
on the top shelf of the bureau. “ Three boys, are you not? 
You are like your mother,” and she stared, with unfeigned 
curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed out in their best 
coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellry. 

“Good God, Madeleine!” Maurice burst out at this, his 
loosely kept patience escaping him. “You didn’t come here, 
I suppose, to remark on my family?” 

“ Well, I can’t congratulate you on an improvement in your 
manners, since I saw you last.” 

“ I am not aware of having changed.” 

“ As well for you, perhaps. However, I’ll tell you about 
myself, if it interests you.” She turned her cool, judicial gaze 
on him again; and now she set before him her projects for the 
future. But though he kept his eyes fastened on her face, she 
saw that he was not listening to what she said, or, at most, 
that he only half heard it ; for, when she ceased to speak, he did 
not notice her silence. 

She waited, curious to see what would come next, and pres- 
ently he echoed, in his vague way: “ Paris, did you say? — 
Really? ” 

“ Yes — Paris: the capital of France. — I said that, and a good 
deal more, which I don’t think you heard. — And now I won’t 
take up your precious time any longer. — You’ve nothing new 
to tell me, I suppose? You still intend staying on here, and 
fighting out the problem of existence? Well, when you have 


534 


MAURICE GUEST 


starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one will let me 
know. I’ll come over for the funeral.” 

She rose, and began to button her jacket. 

“And England has absolutely no chance? English music 
must continue to languish, without hope of reform?” 

“ How can you remember such rot ! I was a terrible fool 
when I talked like that.” 

“ I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your 
acquired wisdom. And I won’t go from here without offering 
you congratulations, hearty congratulations, on the muddle 
you’ve made of things.” 

“ That’s entirely my own affair.” 

“You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else 
would want the responsibility of it? ” 

She went out without a further word. But on the landing 
at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. 
She felt annoyed with herself that she had allowed an un- 
friendly tone to dominate their brief interview. This was 
probably the last time she would see him; the last chance she 
would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And 
viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial 
delicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vig- 
orously, and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did 
so, and began to ascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau 
Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door of Maurice’s 
room. 

He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and 
at her entrance was bending over something that lay there, 
so engrossed that he did not at once raise his head. 

“ Good gracious ! What are you doing ? ” escaped her in- 
voluntarily. 

At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writing- 
table, tried to screen it from her eyes. 

She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. 
“Yes, it’s me again,” she said with determination. “And I 
suppose you’ll want to accuse me of prying, too, like that 
female outside. — Look here: it’s ludicrous for us w’ho have 
been friends so long to part in this fashion. And I, for one, 
don’t intend to do it. There’s something I want to say before 
I go — you may be angry and offended if you like; I don’t 
care ” — for he frowned forbiddingly. “ I’m no denser than 
other people; and I know just as well as every one else the 
wretched mess you’ve got yourself into — one would have to be 


MAURICE GUEST 


535 


blind and deaf, indeed, not to know. — Now, look here, Mau- 
rice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you 
had a sister you’d like her to be something like me. Will you 
look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you some 
sound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I 
had a clear month there. Well, now, throw your things to- 
gether and come with me. You haven’t had a decent holiday 
since you’ve been here. You need freshening up. — Or if not 
Paris — Paris isn’t a necessity — we’ll go down by Munich and 
the Brenner to Italy, and I’ll be cicerone. I’ll act as banker, 
too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and pay 
me back when you’re richer. — Now what do you say? Doesn’t 
the plan tempt you ? ” 

“What I say? ” he echoed, and looked round him a little 
helplessly. “ Why, Madeleine ... It seems you are deter- 
mined to run off with me. Once it was America, and now 
it’s Italy or Paris.” 

“ Come, say you’ll consent, or at least consider it.” 

“ My dear Madeleine! You’re all that is good and kind. 
But you know you’re only talking nonsense.” 

She did not answer him at once. “ The thing is this,” she 
said with some hesitation. “ I wasn’t quite honest in what I 
said to you a few minutes ago. I have the uncomfortable feel- 
ing that I am to a certain degree responsible, even to blame, for 
much of . . . what has happened here. And it isn’t a pleasant 
feeling, Maurice.” 

“My dear girl!” he said again. “If it’s any consolation 
to you to know it, I owe you the biggest debt of my life.” 

“Then you decline my proposal, do you?” 

“ You’re the same good friend you always were. But you’re 
making a mountain out of a molehill. What’s all this fuss 
about? Merely because I haven’t chosen to work my fingers 
to the bone, and wear my nerves to tatters over that old farce 
of a Priifung. As for my choosing to stay here, instead of 
going home like the rest of you — well, that’s a matter of taste, 
too. Some people — like our friend Dove — want affluence, and 
a fixed position in the provinces. Frankly, I don’t. I’d rather 
scrape along here, as best I can. That’s the whole matter in 
a nutshell, and it’s nothing to make a to-do about. For though 
you think I’m a fool, and can’t help telling me so — that, too, 
is a matter of opinion.” 

“ Well, I don’t intend to apologise for myself at this date, 
be sure of that! And now I’ll go. For if you’re resolved to 


MAURICE GUEST 


536 

hold me at arm’s length, there’s nothing more to be said. — No, 
stop a minute, though. Here’s my address in England. If 
ever you should return to join us benighted ignorants, you 
might let me know. Or if you find you can’t get on here — I 
mean if it’s quite impossible — I have money, you know . . . 
and should be glad — at a proper percentage, of course,” she 
added ironically. 

“ That’s hardly likely to happen.” 

She laid the card on the table. “ You never can tell. — 
Well, good-bye, then, and in spite of your obstinacy, I’ll per- 
haps be able to do you a good turn yet, Maurice Guest.” 

As soon as he heard the front door close, he returned to his 
occupation of piecing together the bits of the letter. Ever 
since he had torn it up — throughout her visit — his brain had 
been struggling to recall its exact contents, and without success ; 
for, owing to Madeleine’s presence, he had read it hastily. 
Otherwise, what he had done to-day did not differ from his 
usual method of proceeding. This was not the first horrible 
unsigned letter he had received, and he could never prevail 
on himself to throw them in the fire, unopened. He read them 
through, two or three times, then, angered by their contents 
and by his own weakness, tore them to fragments. But the 
hints and aspersions they contained, remained imprinted on 
his mind. In this case, Madeleine’s distracting appearance had 
enfeebled his memory, and he worked long and patiently until 
the sheet lay fitted together again before him. When he knew 
its contents by heart, he struck some matches, and watched the 
pieces curl and blacken. 

Then he left the house. 

Her room was in darkness. He stretched himself on the 
sofa to wait for her return. 

The words of the letter danced like a writing of fire before 
him ; he lay there and re-read them ; but without anger. What 
they stated might be true, also it might not; he would never 
know. For these letters, which he was ashamed of himself 
for opening, and still more for remembering, had not been 
mentioned between them, but were added to that category of 
things they now tacitly agreed to avoid. In his heart, he knew 
that he cherished the present state of uncertainty ; it was a twi- 
light state, without crudities or sharp outlines; and it was still 
possible to drift and dream in it. Whereas if another terrible 
certainty, like the last, descended on him, he would be forced to 
marshal his energies, and to suffer afresh. It was better not 


MAURICE GUEST 


537 

to know. As long as definite knowledge failed him, he could 
give her the benefit of the doubt. And whether what the 
letters affirmed was true or not, hours came when she still be- 
longed ^wholly to him. Whatever happened on her absences 
from him, as soon as the four walls of the room shut them in 
again, she was his; and each time she returned, a burning 
gratitude for the reprieve filled him anew. 

But there was also another reason why he did not breathe 
a word to her of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread 
that was laming him — the dread of her contempt. She made 
no further attempt to drape it; and he had learned to writhe 
before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed now, since 
the night on which he had made his last stand against her — 
weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had 
seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a 
slackening of the tension between them. The worst that could 
happen had happened, and he had survived it: he had not put 
an end either to himself or to her. On the contrary, he had 
accepted the fact — as he now saw that he would accept every 
fact concerning her, whether for good or evil. And matters hav- 
ing reached this point, a kind of lull ensued : for a few days 
they had even caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. 
But the pause was short-lived: it was like the ripples caused 
by a stone thrown into water, which continue just so long as 
the impetus lasts. Louise had been a little awed by his greater 
strength, when she had lain cowering on the ground before 
him. But not many days elapsed before her eyes were wide 
open with incredulous amazement. When she understood, as 
she soon did, that her shameless admission, and still more, his 
punishment of her for it, was not to be followed up by any 
new development; that, in place of subduing her mentally as 
well, he was going to be content to live on as they had been 
doing; that, in fact, he had already dropped back into the 
old state of things, before she was well aware of what was 
happening: then her passing mood of submission swept over 
into her old flamboyant contempt for him. The fact of 
his having beaten her became a weapon in her hands; and she 
used it unsparingly. To her taunts, he had no answer to make. 
For, the madness once passed, he could not conceive how he 
had been capable of such a thing; in his sane moments of de- 
jection and self-distrust, he could not have raised his hand 
against her, though his life were at stake. 

He had never been able to drag from her a single one of 


MAURICE GUEST 


538 

the reasons that had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this 
point she was inflexible. In the course of that long night 
which he had spent on his knees by her bed, he had persecuted 
her to disclose her motive. But he might as well have spoken 
to the wind; his questioning elicited no reply. Again and 
again, he had upbraided her: “ But you didn’t care for 
Heinz! He was nothing to you!” and she neither assented 
nor gainsaid him. Once, however, she had broken in on him: 
“ You believed bad of me long before there was any to believe. 
Now you have something to go on!” And still again, when 
the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she had suddenly turned 
her head: “But now you can go away. You’re free to leave 
me. Nothing binds you to a woman like me — who can’t be 
content with one man.” Dizzy with fatigue, he had answered : 
“ No — if you think that — if you did it just to be rid of me — 
you’re mistaken ! ” 

From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject 
again — which is not to say that his brain did not work furi- 
ously at it; the search for a clue, for the hidden motive, was 
now his eternal occupation. But to her he was silent, sheerly 
from the dread of again receiving the answer: take me as I 
am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, or in the 
agony of sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. The 
question was such an involved one, and he never seemed to 
come any nearer a solution of it. Sometimes, he was actually 
tempted to believe what her words implied: that it had been 
wilfully done, with a view to getting rid of him. But against 
this, his reason protested ; for, if the letter from Krafft had not 
arrived, he would have known nothing. He did not believe 
she would have told him — would there, indeed, have been any 
need for her to do so? Nothing was changed between them; 
she lived at his side, just as before; and Krafft was out of the 
way. — At other times, though, he asked himself if he were 
not a fool to be surprised at what had occurred. Had not 
all roads led here? Had he not, as she most truly said, 
for long harboured the unworthiest suspicions of her? — suspi- 
cions which were tantamount to an admission on his part that 
his love was no longer enough for her. To have done this, 
and afterwards to behave as if she had been guilty of an un- 
pardonable crime, was illogical and unjust. — And yet again, 
there came moments when, in a barbarous clearness of vision, 
he seemed to get nearest to the truth. Under certain cir- 
cumstances, so he now told himself, he would gladly and 


MAURICE GUEST 


539 


straightway have forgiven her. If she had been drawn, irre- 
sistibly, to another, by one of those sudden outbursts of passion 
before which she was incapable of remaining steadfast; if she 
had been attracted, like this, more than half unwilling, wholly 
humiliated, penitent in advance, yet powerless — then, oh then, 
how willingly he would have made allowance for her weak- 
ness! But Kralft, of all people! — Krafft, of whom she had 
spoken to him with derisive contempt! — this cold and calcu- 
lated deception of him with some one who made not the least 
appeal to her! — Cold and calculated, did he say? No, far from 
it! What could it have been but the sensual caprice of a mo- 
ment? — but a fleeting, manlike desire for the piquancy of 
change? 

These and similar thoughts ran their whirling circles be- 
hind his closed eyes, as he lay in the waning twilight of the 
March evening, which still struggled with the light of the 
lamp. But they were hard pressed by the contents of the letter: 
on this night he foresaw that his fixed idea threatened to divide 
up into two branches — and he did not know whether to be 
glad or to regret it. But he admitted to himself that one of 
these days he would be forced to take measures for preserving 
his sanity, by somehow dragging the truth from her; better 
still, by following her on one of her evening absences, to dis- 
cover for himself where she vtent, and whether what the anon- 
ymous writer asserted was true. If he could only have con- 
trolled his brain! The perpetually repeated circles it drove in 
— if these could once have been brought to a stop, all the rest 
of him infinitely preferred not to know. 

Meanwhile, the shadows deepened, and his subconsciousness 
never ceased to listen, with an intentness which no whirligigs 
of thought could distract, for the sound of her step in the pas- 
sage. When, at length, some short time after darkness had set 
in, he heard her at the door, he drew a long, sighing breath of 
relief, as if — though this was unavowed even to himself — he 
had been afraid he might listen in vain. And, as always, when 
the suspense was over, and she was under the same roof with 
him again, he was freed from so intolerable a weight that he 
was ready to endure whatever she might choose to put upon 
him, and for his part to make no demands. 

Louise entered languidly; and so skilled had he grown at 
interpreting her moods that he knew from her very walk which 
of them she was in. He looked surreptitiously at her, and saw 
that she was wan and tired. It had been a mild, enervating 


540 


MAURICE GUEST 


day; her hair was blown rough about her face. He watched 
her before the mirror take off hat and veil, with slow, yet 
impatient fingers; watched her hands in her hair, which she 
did not trouble to rearrange, but only smoothed back on either 
side. 

She had not, even in entering, cast a glance at him, and, 
recognising the rasped state of her nerves, he had the intent 
to be cautious. But his resolutions, however good, were not 
long proof against her over-emphasised neglect of his pres- 
ence. Her wilful preoccupation with herself, and with inan- 
imate objects, exasperated him. Everything was of more worth 
to her than he was, and she delighted to show it. 

“ Haven’t you a word for me ? Don’t you see I’m here ? ” 
he asked at length. 

Even now she did not look towards him as she answered: 
“ Of course, I see you. But shall I speak next to the furniture 
of the room ? ” 

“ So ! — That’s what I am, is it ? — A piece of your furni- 
ture ! ” 

“ Yes. — No, worse. Furniture is silent.” 

She was changing her walking-dress for the dressing-gown. 
This done, she dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval 
glass pot — a habit of hers to which he had never grown ac- 
customed. 

“Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate 
it.” 

Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the 
powder was strewn over the front of her dress and the floor. 
The clothes she had taken off were flung on a chair; as she 
brushed past them, they fell to the ground. She did not stoop 
to pick them up, but pushed them out of the way with her 
foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closed her eyes, 
and spread her arms out along the arms of the chair. 

He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within 
reach of him, and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out 
his hand and drew the chair towards him, urging it forward, 
inch by inch, until it was beside the sofa. Then he pulled her 
head down, so that it also lay on the cushion, and he could feel 
her hair against his. 

“ How you hate me! ” he said in a low voice, and as though 
he were speaking to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, 
he made of it a screen for his eyes. “ Who could have fore- 
seen this! ” he said again, in the same toneless way. 


MAURICE GUEST 


54i 


Louise lay still, and did not speak. 

“ Why do you stay with me ? ” he went on, looking out 
from under her hand. “ I often ask myself that. For you’re 
free to come and go as you choose.” 

Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. “ And 
I choose to stay here! How often am I to tell you that? 
Why do you come back on it to-night? I’m tired — tired.” 

“ I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It’s 
been a tiring day, and you probably . . . walked too far.” 

With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright 
in her chair. Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his 
apparently harmless words, incensed her. “ Too far, did I ? 
— Oh, to-night at least, be honest! Why don’t you ask me 
straight out where I have been? — and what I have done? Can’t 
you, for once, be man enough to put an open question ? ” 

“ Nothing was further from my mind than to make implica- 
tions. It’s you whp’re so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad 
conscience — sdmething really to conceal.” 

“Take care! — or I shall tell you — where I’ve been! And 
you might regret it.” 

“No. For God’s sake! — no more confessions!” 

She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried 
out: “Why don’t you go away yourself? You know I loathe 
the sight of you; and yet you stick on here like . . . like a 
leech. Go away, oh, why can’t you go away ! ” 

“ To-day, I might have taken you at your word.” 

At the mention of Madeleine’s name, she pricked up her 
ears. “ Oho! ” she said, when he had finished his story. “ So 
Madeleine pays you visits, does she? — the sainted Madeleine! 
You have her there, and me here. — A pretty state of things!” 

“ Hold your tongue! I’m not in the mood to-night to stand 
your gibes.” 

“ But I’m in the mood to make them. And how is one to 
help it when one hears that that ineffable creature is no better 
than she ought to be ? ” 

“ Hold your tongue ! ” he cried again. “ How dare you 
speak like that of the girl who has been such a good friend to 
me!” 

“ Friend ! ” she echoed. “ What fools men are ! She’s in 
love with you, that’s all, and always has been. But you were 
never man enough to know what it was she wanted — your 
friend! ” 

“Ah, you ! ” 


The nervous strain of the afternoon 


542 


MAURICE GUEST 


reached its climax. “You! Yes! — that’s you all over! In 
your eyes nothing is good or pure. And you make everything 
you touch dirty. You’re not fit to take a decent woman’s 
name on your lips ! ” 

She sprang up from her chair. " And that’s my thanks ! — 
for all I’ve done — all I’ve sacrificed for you! I’m not fit to 
take a decent woman’s name on my lips! For shame, for 
shame! For w T ho has made me what I am but you! Oh, what 
a fool I was, ever to let you cross this door! You! — a man who 
is content with other men’s leavings ! ” 

“ It was the worst day’s work you ever did in your life. 
Everything bad has come from that. — Why couldn’t you have 
held back, and refused me? We might still have been decent, 
happy creatures, if you hadn’t let your vile nature get the 
better of you. You wouldn’t marry me — no, no! You prefer 
to take your pleasure in other ways. — A man at any cost, 
Madeleine said once, and God knows, I believe it was true! ” 

She struck him in the face. “Oh, you miserable scoundrel! 
You! — who never looked at me but with the one thought in 
your head! Oh, it’s too much! Never, never while I live — 
I would rather die first ! — shall you ever touch me again ! ” 

She continued to weep, long after he had left her. Still 
crying, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her body shaken 
by her sobs, she moved blindly about the room, opening 
drawers and cupboards, and heaping up their contents on the 
bed. There was a limit to everything; she could bear her life 
with him no longer; and, with nerveless fingers, she strove to 
collect and pack her belongings, preparatory to going away. 


XII 


Easter fell early, and the Ninth Symphony had been per- 
formed in the Gewandhaus before March was fairly out. Now, 
both Conservatorium and Gewandhaus were closed, and the 
familiar haunts were empty. 

Hitherto, Maurice had made shift to preserve appearances: 
at intervals, not too conspicuously far apart, he had gone back- 
wards and forwards to his classes, keeping his head above water 
with a minimum of work. Now, however, there was no 
further need for deceiving people. Most of those who had 
been his fellow-students had left Leipzig; he could not put 
his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had 
a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what 
he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the 
last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the 
trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up rais- 
ing the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. 
Openly now, he took up his abode in the Briiderstrasse, where 
he spent the long, idle days stretched on the sofa, rolling 
cigarettes — in far greater numbers than he could smoke, and 
vacantly, yet with a kind of gusto, as if his fingers, so long 
accustomed to violent exercise, had a relish for the task. He 
was seldom free from headache; an iron ring, which it was im- 
possible to loosen, bound his forehead. His disinclination to 
speech grew upon him, too; not only had he no thoughts that 
it was worth breaking the silence to express; the effort de- 
manded by the forming of words was too great for him. His 
feeling of indifference — stupefying indifference — grew so strong 
that sometimes he felt it beyond his strength consciously to take 
in the shape of the objects about the room. 

The days were eventless. He lay and watched her move- 
ments, which were spiritless and hurried, by turns, but now 
seldom marked by the gracious impulsiveness that had made 
up so large a part of her charm. He was content to live 
from hour to hour at her side ; for that this was his last respite, 
he well knew. And the further the month advanced, the more 
tenaciously he clung. The one thought which now had force 
to rouse him was, that the day would come on which he would 

543 


544 


MAURICE GUEST 


see her face for the last time. The fact that she had given 
herself to another, while yet belonging to him, ceased to 
affect him displeasurably, as did also his fixed idea that she 
was, at the present moment, deceiving him anew. His sole ob- 
session was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was this 
fear which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in 
which he was sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. 
But after a scene of this kind, he would half suffocate her 
with remorse. And this, perhaps, worked destruction most 
surely of all: the knowledge that, despite the ungovernable 
aversion she felt for him, she could still tolerate his endear- 
ments. Not once, as long as they had been together, had she 
refused to be caressed. 

But the impossibility of the life they were leading broke 
over Louise at times, with the shock of an ice-cold wave. 

“ If you have any feeling left in you — if you have ever 
cared for me in the least — go away now!” she wept. “Go 
to the ends of the earth — only leave me ! ” 

He was giddy with headache that day. “To whom? Who 
is it you want now ? ” 

One afternoon as he lay there, the landlady came in with a 
telegram for him, which she said had been brought round by 
one of Frau Krause’s children — she tossed it on the table, as 
she spoke, to express the contempt she felt for him. Several 
minutes elapsed before he put out his hand for it, and then 
he did so, because it required less energy to open it than to 
leave it unopened. When he had read it, he gave a short laugh, 
and threw it back on the table. Louise, who was in the other 
part of the room, came out, half-dressed, to see what the mat- 
ter was. She, too, laughed at its contents in her insolent way, 
and, on passing the writing-table, pulled open the drawer where 
she kept her money. 

“ There’s enough for two. And you’re no prouder in this, 
I suppose, than in anything else.” 

The peremptory summons home, and the announcement that 
no further allowance would be remitted, was not a surprise to 
him; he had known all along that, sooner or later, he would 
be thrown on his own resources. It had happened a little 
earlier than he had expected — that was all. A week had still 
to run till the end of the month. — That night, however, when 
Louise was out, he meditated, in a desultory fashion, over the 
likely and unlikely occupations to which he could turn his 
hand. 


MAURICE GUEST 


545 

A few days later, she came home one evening in a different 
mood: for once, no cruel words crossed her lips. They sat 
side by side on the sofa; and of such stuff was happiness now 
made that he was content. Chancing to look up, he was dis- 
mayed to see that her eyes were full of tears, which, as he 
watched, ran over and down her cheeks. He slid to his knees, 
and laid his head in her lap. 

She fell asleep early; for, no matter what happened, how 
uneventful or 'how tragically exciting her day was, her faculty 
for sleep remained unchanged. It was a brilliant night; in 
the sky was a great, round, yellow moon, and the room was 
lit up by it. The blind of the window facing the bed had not 
been lowered; and a square patch of light fell across the bed. 
He turned and looked at her, lying in it. Her face was towards 
him ; one arm was flung up above her head ; the hand lay with 
the palm exposed. Something in the look of the face, blanched 
by the unreal light, made him recall the first time he had seen 
it, and the impression it had then left on his mind. While 
she played in Schwarz’s room, she had turned and looked at him, 
and it had seemed to him then, that some occult force had gone 
out from the face, and struck home in him. And it had never 
lessened. Strange, that so small a thing, hardly bigger than 
one’s two closed fists, should be able to exert such an influence 
over one! For this face it was — the pale oval, in the dark set- 
ting, the exotic colouring, the heavy-lidded eyes — which held 
him; it was this face which drew him surely back with a 
vital nostalgia — a homesickness for the sight of her and the 
touch of her — if he were too long absent. It had not been any 
coincidence of temperament or sympathies — by rights, all the 
rights of their different natures, they had not belonged to- 
gether — any more than it had been a mere blind uprush of 
sensual desire. And just as his feelings for her had had nothing 
to do with reason, or with the practical conduct of his life, 
so they had outlasted tenderness, faithfulness, respect. What- 
ever it was that held him, it lay deeper than these conventional 
ideas of virtue. The power her face had over him was un- 
diminished, though he now found it neither beautiful nor good ; 
though he knew the true meaning of each deeply graven line. 
— This then was love? — this morbid possession by a woman’s 
face. 

He laid his arm across his tired eyes, and, without waiting 
to consider the question he had propounded, commenced to 
follow out a new train of thought. No doubt, for each in- 


MAURICE GUEST 


546 

dividual, there existed in one other mortal some physical de- 
tail which he or she could find only in this particular person. 
It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it seemed, in the 
colour of an eye ; some in the modulations of a voice, the curve 
of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion. 
Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant 
characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, 
to the one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that 
corner of the soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the 
want of it — a suffering which nothing but this intonation, this 
particular smile, could allay. He himself had long since 
learnt what it was, about her face, that made a like appeal to 
him. It was her eyes. Not their size, or their dark brilliancy, 
but the manner of their setting: the spacious lid that fell from 
the high, wavy eyebrow, first sloping deeply inwards, then curv- 
ing out again, over the eyeball ; this, and the clean sweep of the 
broad, white lid, which, when lowered, gave the face an in- 
fantine look — a look of marble. He knew it was this; for, 
on the strength of a mere hinted resemblance, he had been un- 
able to take his eyes off the face of another woman; the like- 
ness in this detail had met his gaze with a kind of shock. But 
what a meaningless thing was life, when the way a lid drooped, 
or an eyebrow grew on a forehead, could make such havoc 
of your nerves! And more especially when, in the brain or 
soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait answered to the physical. 
— Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not for him. The 
strong man tore himself away while there was still time, or 
saved himself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither 
strength nor saving occupation, had bartered all he had, and 
knowingly, for the beauty of this face. And as long as it 
existed for him, his home was beside it. 

He turned restlessly. Disturbed in her dreams, Louise flung 
over on her other side. 

“ Eugen ! ” she murmured. “ Save me ! — Here I am ! Oh, 
don’t you see me? ” 

He shook her by the arm. “ Wake up! ” 

She was startled and angry. “ Won’t you even let me 
sleep? ” 

“ Keep your dreams to yourself then ! ” 

There was a savage hatred in her look. “ Oh, if I only 
could! ... if only my hands were strong enough! — I’d kill 
you!” 

“ You’ve done your best.” 


MAURICE GUEST 


547 

“Yes. And I’m glad! Remember that, afterwards. I was 
glad!” 

It had been a radiant April morning of breeze and sunshine, 
but towards midday, clouds gathered, and the sunlight was 
constantly intercepted. Maurice had had occasion to fetch 
something from his lodgings and was on his way back. The 
streets were thronged with people: business men, shop-assistants 
and students, returning to work from the restaurants in which 
they had dined. At a corner of the Zeitzerstrasse , a hand-cart 
had been overturned, and a crowd had gathered ; for, no matter 
how busy people were, they had time to gape and stare; and 
they were now as eager as children to observe this incident, in 
the development of which a stout policeman was wordily author- 
itative. Maurice found that he had loitered with the rest, to 
watch the gathering up of the spilt wares, and to hear the ensu- 
ing altercation between hawker and policeman. On turning to 
walk on again, his eye was caught and held by the tall figure of 
a man who was going in the same direction as he, but at a brisk 
pace, and several yards in front of him. This person must have 
passed the group round the cart. Now, intervening heads and 
shoulders divided them, obstructing Maurice’s view; still, signs 
were not wanting in him that his subliminal consciousness was 
beginning to recognise the man who walked ahead. There 
was something oddly familiar in the gait, in the droop of the 
shoulders, the nervous movement of the head, the aimless 
motion of the dangling hands and arms — briefly, in all the 
loosely hung body. And, besides this, the broad-brimmed felt 
hat . . . Good God ! He stiffened, with a sudden start, and, 
in an instant, his entire attention was concentrated in an effort 
to see the colour of the hair under the hat. Was it red? He 
tried to strike out in lengthier steps, but the legs of the man in 
front were longer, and his own unruly. After a moment’s in- 
decision, however, he mastered them, and then, so afraid was 
he of the other passing out of sight, that he all but ran, and 
kept this pace up till he was close behind the man he followed. 
There he fell into a walk again, but a weak and difficult walk, 
for his heart was leaping in his chest. He had not been mistaken. 
The person close before him, so close that he could almost have 
touched him, was no other than Schilsky — the Schilsky of old, 
with the insolent, short-sighted eyes, and the loose, easy walk. 

Maurice followed him — 'followed warily and yet unreflect- 
ingly — right down the long, populous street. Sometimes blindly, 


‘MAURICE GUEST 


548 

too, for, when the street and all it contained swam before him, 
he was obliged to shut his eyes. People looked with attention at 
him; he caught a glimpse of himself in a barber’s mirror, and 
saw that his face had turned a greenish white. His mind was 
set on one point. Arrived at the corner where the street ran 
out into the Komgsplatz , which turning would Schilsky take? 
Would he go to the right, where lay the Bruderstrasse, or would 
he take the lower street to the left? Until this question was 
answered, it was impossible to decide what should be done next. 
But first, there came a lengthy pause: Schilsky entered a music- 
shop, and remained inside, leaning over the counter, for a quar- 
ter of an hour. Finally, however, the corner was reached. He 
appeared to hesitate: for a moment it seemed as if he were 
going straight on, which would mean fresh uncertainty. Then, 
with a sudden outward fling of the hands, he went off to the 
left, in the direction of the Gewandhaus. 

Maurice did not follow him any further. He stood and 
watched, until he could no longer see the swaying head. After 
that he had a kind of collapse. He leaned up against the wall of 
a house, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Passers- 
by believed him to be drunk, and were either amused, or horri- 
fied, or saddened. He discovered, in truth, that his legs were 
shaking as if with an ague, and, stumbling into a neighbouring 
wine-shop, he drank brandy — not enough to stupefy him, only 
to give back to his legs their missing strength. 

To postpone her knowing! To hinder her from knowing at 
any cost! — his blurred thoughts got no further than this. He 
covered the ground at a mad pace, clinging fast to the belief 
that he would find her, as he had left her, in bed. But his first 
glimpse of her turned him cold. She was standing before the 
glass, dressed to go out. This in itself was bad enough. Worse, 
far worse, was it that she had put on, to-day, one of the light, 
thin dresses she had worn the previous spring, and never since. 
It was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, and 
doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for 
proved that she was dressed to leave him ; and the sight of her, 
refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering 
sense. He demanded with such savageness the meaning of her 
adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she turned 
on him was real, and not feigned. 

“ Take off that dress ! You shan’t go out of the house in it ! — 
Take it off! ” 

He raved, threatened, implored, always with icy fingers at 


MAURICE GUEST 


549 

his heart. He knew that she knew; he would have taken his 
oath on it; and he only had room In his brain for one thought: 
to prevent her knowing. His rage spent itself on the light, 
flowery dress. As nothing he said moved her, he set his foot 
on the skirt, and tore it down from the waist. She struck 
at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe — a still 
lighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through 
an hour such as that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and 
furniture lay strewn about the room. 

When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, 
wherever she went on this day, he would go, too, she gave up 
any plan she might have had, and followed where he led. This 
was, as swiftly as possible, by the outlying road to the Conne- 
witz woods. If he could but once get her there, they would be 
safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude, among the 
screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, but some- 
thing would — must — happen. 

He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there ! 
His eyes grew stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind 
him, on all sides. And never had she seemed to move so slowly ; 
never had she stared so brazenly about her, as on this afternoon. 
With every step they took, certainty burned higher in him ; the 
thin, fixed smile that disfigured her lips said: do your worst; 
do all you can; nothing will save you! He did not draw a 
full breath till they were far out on the Schleussiger Weg. 
Then he dropped her arm, and wiped his face. 

The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding 
day. Louise, dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let 
her long skirt trail behind her. He called her attention to it, 
furiously, and this was the first time he had spoken since 
leaving the house. But she did not even look down: she picked 
out a part of the road that was still dirtier, where her feet sank 
and stuck. 

They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one 
of the first seats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled 
with the idea of getting her into the heart of the woods, he was 
ahead of her, urging the pace; and he had taken a further 
step or two before he saw that she had remained behind. He 
was forced to return. 

“ What are you sitting there for ? ” He turned on her, with 
difficulty resisting the impulse to strike her full in her con- 
temptuous white face. 

She laughed — her terrible laugh, which made the very 


550 MAURICE GUEST 

nerves twitch in his finger-tips. “ Why does one usually sit 
down ? ” 

“One? — You’re not one! You’re you!” Now he wished 
hundreds of listeners were in their neighbourhood, that the 
fierceness of his voice might carry to them. 

“And you’re a madman ! ” 

“ Yes, treat me like the dirt under your feet! But you can’t 
deceive me. — Do you think I don’t know why you’re stopping 
here ?’ 

She looked away from him, without replying. 

“ Do you think I don’t know why you’ve decked yourself 
out like this ? ” 

“ For God’s sake stop harping on my dress! ” 

“ Why you’ve bedizened yourself ? . . . why you were going 
out? . . . why you’ve spied and gaped eternally from one side 
of the street to the other? ” 

As she only continued to look away, the desire seized him 
to say something so incisive that the implacability of her face 
would have to change, no matter to what. “ I’ll tell you then ! ” 
he shouted, and struck the palm of one hand with the back of 
the other, so that the bones in both bit and stung. “ I’ll tell 
you. You’re waiting here . . . waiting, I say! But you’ll 
wait to no purpose! For you’ve reckoned without me.” 

“Oh, very well, then, if it pleases you, I’m waiting! But 
you can at least say for what? For you perhaps? — for you to 
regain your senses ? ” 

“Stop your damned sneering! Will you tell me you don’t 
know who’s — don’t know he’s here ? ” 

Still she continued to overlook him. “ He ? — who ? — what ? ” 
She flung the little words at him like stones. Yet, in the second 
that elapsed before his reply, a faint presentiment widened her 
eyes. 

“You’ve got the audacity to ask that?” Flinging himself 
dow r n on the seat, he put his hands in his pockets, and stretched 
out his legs. “ Who but your precious Schilsky ! — the man who 
knew how you ought to be treated . . . who gave you what 
you deserved ! ” 

His first feeling was one of relief: the truth was out; there 
was an end to the torture of the past hour. But after this 
one flash of sensation, he ceased to consider himself. At his 
words Louise turned so white that he thought she was going 
to faint. She raised her hand to her throat, and held it there. 
She tried to say something, and could not utter a sound. 


MAURICE GUEST 


55i 


Her voice had left her. She turned her head and looked 
at him, in a strange, apprehensive way, with the eyes of a 
trapped animal. 

“ Eugen! — Eugen is here? ” she said at last. “ Here? — Do 
you know what you’re saying?” Now that her voice had 
come, it was a little thin whisper, like the voice of a sick 
person. She pushed hat and hair, both suddenly become an 
intolerable weight, back from her forehead. 

Still he was not warned. “ Will you swear to me you didn’t 
know? ” 

“ I know? I swear? ” Her voice was still a mere echo of 
itself. But now she rose, and standing at the end of the seat 
furthest from him, held on to the back of it. “ I know? ” she 
repeated, as if to herself. Then she drew a long breath, which 
quivered through her, and, with it, voice and emotion and the 
power of expression returned. “ I know ? ” she cried with a 
startling loudness. “ Good God, you fool, do you think I’d 
be here with you, if I had known ? — if I had known ! ” 

A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. “ Take 
care! — take care what you say!” 

She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed 
through the woods. 

“ Take care! ” he said again, and trembled. 

“ Of what? — of you, perhaps? You! ” 

“ I may kill you yet.” 

“ Oh, such as you don’t kill ! ” 

She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked 
up at her swift movement. There was a blueness round his 
lips. 

“ What are you going to do ? ” 

She laughed. 

“You’re . . . you’re going to him! Louise! — you are not 
going to him?” 

“ Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?” 

“ Stay here! ” He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook 
his hand off as though it were a poisonous insect. “ For God’s 
sake, think what you’re doing! Have a little mercy on me! ” 

“ Have you ever had mercy on me? ” 

She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an 
equally impulsive resolve, came back and confronted him. 

“You talk to me of mercy? — 'you! — when nothing I could 
wish you would be bad enough for you? — Oh, I never thought 
it would be possible to hate anyone as I hate you — you mean- 


552 


MAURICE GUEST 


souled, despicable dummy of a man! — Why couldn’t you have 
let me alone? I didn’t care that much for you — not that much! 
But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and your flat- 
tery, and your sympathy — it was all lies, every word of it ! Do 
you think what has happened to us would ever have happened if 
you’d been a different kind of man? — But you have never had 
a clean thought of me — never ! Do you suppose I haven’t known 
what you were thinking and believing about me in these last 
weeks? — 'those nights when I waited night after night to see a 
light come back in his windows? Yes, and I let you believe it; 
I wanted you to; I was glad you did — glad to see you suffer. 
I wish you were dead! — Do you see that river? Go and throw 
yourself into it. I’ll stand here and watch you sink, and laugh 
when I see you drowning. — Oh, I hate you — hate you ! I shall 
hate you to my last hour! ” 

She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his 
head, she was gone. 

He made an involuntary, but wholly uncertain, movement to 
follow her, did not, however, carry it out, and sank back into 
his former attitude. His cold hands were deep in his pockets, 
his shoulders drawn up ; and his face, drained of its blood, was 
like the face of an old man. He had made no attempt to defend 
himself, had sat mute, letting her vindictive words go over him, 
inwardly admitting their truth. Now he closed his eyes, and 
kept them shut, until the thudding of his heart grew less forci- 
ble. When he looked up again, his gaze met the muddy, slug- 
gish water, into which she had dared him to throw himself. But 
he did not even recall her taunt. He merely sat and stared at 
the river, amazed at the way in which it had, as it were, de- 
tached itself from other objects. All at once it had acquired a 
life of its own, and it was difficult to believe that it had ever 
been an integral part of the landscape. 

He remained sitting till the mists were breast-high. But 
even when, after more than one start — for his legs were stiff 
and numbed — he rose to go home, he did not realise what had 
happened to him. He was only aware that night had fallen, 
and that it would be better to get back in the direction of the 
town. 

The twinkling street-lamps did more than anything towards 
rousing him. But they also made him long, with a sudden 
vehemence, for some warm, brightly lighted interior, where it 
would be possible to forget the night-haunted river. He sought 
out an obscure cafe, and entering, called for brandy. On 


MAURICE GUEST 


553 


this night, he was under no necessity to limit himself; and 
he sat, glowering at the table, and emptying his glass, 
until he had died a temporary, and charitable, death. The 
delicious sensation of sipping the brandy was his chief re- 
membrance of these hours; but, also, like far-off, incorporate 
happenings, he was conscious, as the night deepened, of women’s 
shrill and lively voices, and of the pressure of a woman’s arms. 


XIII 


He wakened, the next morning, to strange surroundings. Half 
opening his eyes, he saw a strip of drab wall-paper, besprinkled 
with crude pink roses, and the black and gilt frame of an oblong 
mirror. He shut them again immediately, preferring to believe 
that he was still dreaming. Somewhere in the back of his head, 
a machine was working, with slow, steady throbs, which made 
his body vibrate as a screw does a steamer. He lay enduring it, 
and trying to sleep again, to its accompaniment. But just as 
he was on the point of dozing off, a noise in the room startled 
him, and made him wide awake. He was not alone. Some- 
thing had fallen to the floor, and a voice exclaimed impatiently. 
Peering through his lids, he looked out beyond the wall 
which had first chained his attention. His eyes fell on 
the back of a woman, who was sitting in front of one of the 
windows, doing her hair. In her hand she held a pair of curling- 
tongs, and, before her, on the foot-end of the sofa, a hand-glass 
was propped up. Her hair was thick and blond. She wore a 
black silk chemise, which had slipped low on her plump shoul- 
ders ; a shabby striped petticoat was bound round her waist, and 
her naked feet were thrust into down-trodden, felt shoes. 
Maurice lay still, in order that she should not suspect his being 
awake. For a few minutes, there was silence; then he was 
forced to sneeze, and at the sound the woman muttered some- 
thing, and came to the side of the bed. A curl was imprisoned 
between the blades of the tongs, which she continued to hold 
aloft, in front of her forehead. 

“ Na, Kleiner! . . . had your sleep out?” she asked in a 
raucous voice. As Maurice did not reply, but closed his 
eyes again, blinded by the sunshine that poured into the room, 
she laughed, and made a sound like that with which one urges 
on a horse. “ Don’t feel up to much this morning ... eh? 
Herrje , Kleiner , but you were tight!” and, at some remem- 
brance of the preceding night, she chuckled to herself. “ And 
now, I bet you, you feel as if you’d never be able to lift your 
head again. Just wait a jiffy! I’ll get you something that’ll 
revive you.” 


554 


MAURICE GUEST 


555 

She waddled to the door and he heard her call: " Johann , 
einen Schnaps! ** 

Feet shuffled in the passage; she handed Maurice a glass of 
brandy. 

“ There you are ! — that’ll pull you together. Swallow it 
down,” she said, as he hesitated. “ You’ll feel another man after 
it. — And now I’ll do what I wouldn’t do for every one — make 
you a coffee to wash down the nasty physic.” 

She laughed loudly at her own joke, and laid the curling- 
tongs aside. He watched her move about the room in search of 
spirit-lamp and coffee-mill. Beneath the drooping black chemise, 
her loose breasts swayed. 

“ Not that I’ve much time,” she went on, as she ground the 
coffee. “ It’s gone a quarter to twelve already, and I like fresh 
air. I don’t miss a minute of it. — So up you get ! Here, dowse 
your head in this water.” 

Leaning against the table, Maurice drank the cup of black 
coffee, and considered his companion. No longer young, she 
was as coarsely haggard as are the generality of women of her 
class, scanned by cruel daylight. And while she could never 
have been numbered among the handsome ones of her profes- 
sion, there was yet a certain kindliness in the smallish blue 
eyes, and in her jocose manner of treating him. 

She, too, eyed him as he drank. 

" Sag J mal Kleiner — will you come again ? ” she broke the 
silence. 

“What’s your name? he asked evasiveiy, and put the cup 
down on the table. 

“ Oh . . . just ask for Luise,” she said. On her tongue, 
the name had three long-drawn syllables, and there was a v 
before the i. 

She was nettled by his laugh. 

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “ Geh’, Kleiner, sei 
nett! — won’t you come again ? ” 

“ Perhaps.” 

‘ Well, ask for Luise, if you do. That’s enough.” 

He turned to put on his coat. As he did so, a disagreeable 
thought crossed his mind; he coloured, and ran his hand 
through his pockets. 

“ I’ve no money.” 

“What? — rooked, are you? Well, it wasn’t here, then. I’m 
an honest girl, I am! ” 

She came over to him, not exactly suspicious, still with a 


MAURICE GUEST 


556 

slight diminution of friendliness in eyes and tone; and, as, if 
there were room for a mistake on his part, herself went through 
the likely pockets in turn. 

*’ Not a heller! ” 

Her sharp little eyes travelled over him. 

“ That’d do.” 

She laid her hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave 
it to her. She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her 
arms round his neck, and gave him a hearty kiss. 

" Du gefallst mir ! ** she said. “ I like you. Kiss me, too, 
can’t you? ” 

He looked down on the plump, ungainly figure, and, without 
feeling either satisfaction or repugnance, stooped and kissed the 
befringed forehead. 

“Adieu, Kleiner! Come again.” 

“Adieu, LuiseJ' * 

He was eyed — he felt it — from various rooms, the doors of 
which stood ajar. The front door was wide open, and he left 
it so. He descended the stairs with a sagging step. Half-way 
down, he stopped short. He had spoken the truth when he 
said that he was without money; every pfennig he possessed, 
had been in his pocket the night before. Under these cir- 
cumstances, he could undertake nothing. But, even while he 
thought it, his hand sought his watch, which he carried chain- 
less in a pocket of his vest. It was there, and as his fingers 
closed on it, he proceeded on his way. 

The day had again set in brilliantly; the shadows on roads 
and pavements had real depth, and the outlines of the houses 
were hard against a cloudless sky. He kept his eyes fixed on 
the ground ; for the crudeness of the light made them ache. 

His feet bore him along the road they knew better than 
any other. And until he had been in the Briiderstrasse, he 
could not decide what was to come next. He dragged 
along, with bowed head, and the distance seemed unending. 
Even when he had turned the corner and was in the street 
itself, he kept his head down, and only when he was opposite 
the house, did he throw a quick glance upwards. His heart 
gave a terrifying leap, then ceased to beat: when it began again, 
it was at a mad gallop, which prevented him drawing breath. 
All three windows stood wide open ; the white window-curtains 
hung out over the sills, and flapped languidly in the breeze. 

He crossed the road with small steps, like a convalescent. 
He pushed back the heavy house-door, and entered the vestibule, 


MAURICE GUEST 


557 

which was cold and shadowy. Step by step, he climbed to the 
first landing. The door of the flat was shut, but the little door 
in the wall stood ajar, and he could see right into the room. 

He leaned against the banisters, where the shadow was 
deepest. Inside the room that had been his world, two char- 
women rubbed and scoured, talking as they worked in strident 
tones. The heavy furniture had been pulled into the middle of 
the floor, and shrouded in white coverings; chairs were laid on 
the bed, with their legs in the air. There was no trace of any- 
thing that had belonged to Louise; all familiar objects had van- 
ished. It was a strange, unnatural scene: he felt as one might 
feel who, by means of some mysterious agency, found it possible 
to be present at his own burial, while he was still alive. 

One of the women began to beat the sofa ; under cover of the 
blows, which reverberated through the house, he slunk away. 
But he did not get far: when he was recalled to himself by a 
new noise in one of the upper storeys, he found that he was 
standing on the bottom step of the stairs, holding fast to the 
round gilt ball that surmounted the last post of the banisters. 
He moved from there to the warmth of the house-door, and, 
for some time before going out, stood sunning himself, a forlorn 
figure, with eyes that blinked at the light. He felt very cold, 
and weak to the point of faintness. This sensation reminded 
him that he had had no solid food since noon the day before. 
His first business was obviously to eat a meal. Fighting a grow- 
ing dizziness, he trudged into the town, and, having pawned his 
watch, went to a restaurant, and forced himself to swallow the 
meal that was set before him — though there were moments when 
it seemed incredible that it was actually he who plied knife and 
fork. He would have been glad to linger for a time, after 
eating, but the restaurant was crowded, and the waiter openly 
impatient for him to be gone. As he rose, he saw the man 
flicking the crumbs off the cloth, and setting the table anew; 
some one was waiting to take his place. 

When he emerged again into the thronged and slightly dusty 
streets, his previous strong impression of the unreality of things 
was upon him again. Now, however, it seemed as though some 
submerged consciousness were at work in him. For, though he 
was not aware of having reviewed his position, or of having cast 
a plan of action, he knew at once what was to be done; and, as 
before, his feet bore him, without bidding, where he had to go. 

He retraced his steps, and half-way down the Klostergasse , 
entered a gunsmith’s shop. The owner, an elderly man in a 


MAURICE GUEST 


558 

velvet cap and gold-rimmed spectacles, looked at him over the 
tops of these, then said curtly, he could not oblige him. 
What was more, he came out after him, and, standing in 
the shop-door, watched him go down the street. At his refusal, 
Maurice had hurriedly withdrawn: now, as he went, he was 
troubled by the fact that the man’s face was vaguely familiar to 
him. For the length of a street-block, he endeavoured to recol- 
lect where he had seen the face before. And suddenly he knew : 
it was this very shop he had once been in to inquire after Krafft, 
and this was the same man who had then been so uncivil to him. 
But as soon as he remembered, the knowledge ceased to interest 
him. 

Rendered cautious by his first experience, he went to another 
neighbourhood, and having sought for some time, found a 
smaller shop, in a side street. He had ready this time the fiction 
of a friend and a commission. But a woman regretted wordily 
that her husband had just stepped out; he would no doubt be 
back again immediately ; if the Herr would take a chair and wait 
a little ? — But the thought of waiting made him turn on his heel. 
Finally, at his third attempt, a young lad gave him what he 
desired, without demur; and, after he had known a quick fear 
lest he should not have sufficient money for the purchase, the 
matter was satisfactorily settled. 

On returning to his room, he found a letter lying on the 
table. He pounced upon it with a desperate hope. But it was 
only the monthly bill for the hire of the piano. 

In entering, he had made some noise, and Frau Krause was 
in the room before he knew it. She was primed for an angry 
scene. But he made short work of her complaints and accu- 
sations. 

“To-morrow! I’ll have time for all that to-morrow.” 

He turned the key in the door, and sitting down before the 
writing-table, commenced to go through drawers and pigeon- 
holes. It had not been a habit of his to keep letters; but 
nevertheless a certain number had accumulated, and these he 
was averse to let fall into the hands of strangers. He performed 
his work coolly, with a pedantic thoroughness. He had no 
sympathy with those people, who, doing what he was about to 
do, left ragged ends behind them. His mind had always inclined 
to law and order. And so, having written a note authorising 
Frau Krause to keep his books and clothes, in place of the out- 
standing rent, he put a match to the fire which was laid in the 
stove, and, on his knees before it, burnt all such personal trifles 


MAURICE GUEST 


559 


as had value for himself alone. He postponed, to the last, even 
handling the small packet made up of the letters he had had from 
Louise. Then their turn came, too. Kneeling before the stove- 
door, he dropped them, one by one, into the flames. The last 
to burn was the first he had received — a mere hastily scrawled 
line, a twisted note, which opened as it blackened. 1 must speak 
to you. Will you come to me this evening? As he watched it 
shrivel, he had a vivid recollection of that long past day. 
He remembered how he had tried to shave, and how he had 
dressed himself in his best, only to fling back again into his 
working-clothes, annoyed with himself for even harbouring the 
thought. Yes; but that had always been his way: he had ex- 
pended consideration and delicacy where none was necessary; 
he had seen her only as he wished to see her. — After this, 
the photographs. They were harder to burn ; he was forced to 
tear them across, in two, three pieces. Even then, the flames 
licked slowly; he watched them creep up — over her dress, her 
hands, her face. 

Afternoon had turned to evening. When, at length, every- 
thing was in order, he lay down on the sofa to wait for it to 
grow quite dark. But almost at once, as if his back had been 
eased of a load, he fell asleep. When he opened his eyes 
again, the lamp had burned low, and filled the room with a 
poisonous vapour. It was two o’clock. This was the time to go. 
But a boisterous wind had risen, and was blustering round the 
house. He said to himself that he would wait still a little 
longer, to see if it did not subside. In waiting, he slept again, 
heavily, as he had not done for many a night, and when he 
wakened next, a clock was striking four. He rose at once, and 
with his boots in his hand, crept out of the house. 

Day was breaking ; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the 
east widened with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale 
grey light. He met an army of street-sweepers, indistinguisha- 
bly male and female, returning from their work, their long 
brooms over their shoulders. It had rained a little, and the 
pavements were damp and shining. The wind had dropped to 
a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners. Be- 
fore his mind’s eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw 
one of those early spring days of illimitable blue highness and 
white, woofy clouds, which stand stationary where the earth 
meets the sky; the brightness of the sun makes the roads seem 
whiter and the grass greener, bringing out new tints and colours 
in everything it touches. Over it all would run this light, 


MAURICE GUEST 


560 

swift wind, bending the buds, and even, towards afternoon, 
throwing up a fine white dust. — And it was to the thought of 
the dust that his mind clung most tenaciously, as to some homely 
and familiar thing which he would never see again. 

He had made straight for the well-known seat with the 
bosky background. Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, 
into an open space among the undergrowth, which was now 
generously sprinkled with buds. The leaves that had fallen 
during the previous autumn made a carpet under his feet. Some- 
where, in the distance, a band was playing: a body of soldiers 
was being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he was 
carrying, and laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feel- 
ing afraid; if he had a fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, 
he should do what he had to do, clumsily. In loosening the 
clothes at his neck, however, he perceived that his hand was 
shaking, and this made him aware that his heart also was beat- 
ing unevenly. He stood and fumbled with his collar-stud, 
which he could not unfasten at once, and, while he was busied 
thus, the mists that blinded him fell away. He ceased, abruptly, 
to be the mere automaton that had moved and acted, without 
will df its own, for the past four-and-twenty hours. Standing 
there, with his fingers at his neck, he was pierced by a sudden 
lucid perception of what had happened. An intolerable spasm 
of remembrance gripped him. With a rush of bitterness, which 
was undiluted agony, all the shame and suffering of the past 
months swept over him once more, concentrated in a last su- 
preme moment. And, as though this were not enough, while he 
still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collar in his despera- 
tion, her face rose before him — but not the face he had known 
and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time, dis- 
figured by hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been 
when she spat on the ground at his feet. This vision gave him 
an unlooked-for jerk of courage. Without allowing himself an- 
other second in which to reason or reflect, he caught up the 
revolver from the seat, and pressed the cold little nozzle to his 
chest. Simultaneously he received a sharp blow, and heard the 
crack of a report — but far away ... in the distance. He 
was on his back, without knowing how he had got there; 
straight overhead waved the bare branches of a tree; behind 
them, a . grey morning cloud was sailing. For still the fraction 
of a second, he heard the familiar melody, to which the soldiers 
marched ; and the branch swayed . . . swayed . . . 

Then, as suddeilly as the flame of a candle is puffed out by 


MAURICE GUEST 


561 

the wind, his life went from him. His right hand twitched, 
made as if to open, closed again, and stiffened round the iron of 
the handle. His jaw fell, and, like an inner lid, a glazed film 
rose over his eyes, which for hours afterwards continued to 
stare, with an expression of horror and amaze, at the naked 
branches of the tree. 

***** 

One midday, a couple of years later, a number of those who 
had formed the audience at one of the last rehearsals of the 
season, were gathered round the back entrance to the Gewand- 
haus. It was a fresh spring day, gusty and sunny by turns: 
sometimes, there came a puff of wind that drove every one’s hand 
to his hat; at others, the broad square basked in an almost mo- 
tionless sunshine. The small crowd lingered in order to see, at 
close quarters, the violinist who had played there that morning. 
Only a few of those present had known Schilsky personally; 
but one and all were curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam 
Leipzig student, who, it was whispered, would soon return to 
the town to take up a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky 
was now Konzertmeister in a large South German town ; but it 
was rather as a composer that his name had begun to burn on 
people’s tongues. His new symphonic poem, Uber die letzten 
Dinge , had drawn down on his head that mixture of extravagant 
laudation and abusive derision which constitutes fame. 

“ Take a look at his wife, if she’s there,” said one American 
to another, who was standing beside him. “ She studied here 
same time he did, and is said to have been very handsome. An 
English chap shot himself on her account.” 

“You don’t say!” drawled his companion. “It’s a queer 
thing, how common suicide’s getting to be. You can’t pick up 
a noospaper, nowadays, without finding some fool or other has 
blown his brains out.” 

“ Look out! — here they come.” 

Behind the thick glass doors, Schilsky became visible. He was 
talking volubly to a Jewish-looking stranger in a fur-lined coat. 
His hat was pushed far back on his forehead ; his face was 
flushed with elation ; and, consciously unconscious of the waiting 
crowd, he gesticulated as he walked, throwing out the palms of 
his loosely dangling hands, and emphasising his words with 
restless movements of the head. He was respectfully greeted by 
those who had known him. A minute or two later came Louise, 


AUG 22 1908 

562 MAURICE GUEST 

At her side was a pianist with whom Schilsky had given a con- 
cert earlier in the week — a shabbily dressed young man, with 
a world of enthusiasm in his candid blue eyes. He, too, was 
talking with animation. But Louise had no attention for any- 
one but her husband. 

“ Well, not my taste ... I must confess,” laughed the 
man who had been severe on suicide. “ Fine eyes, if you like — 
but give me something fresher.” 

She was wearing a long cloak. The door, in swinging to, 
caught an end of this, and hindered her progress. Both she and 
her companion stooped to free it; their hands met; and the 
bystanders saw the young man colour darkly over face and 
neck. 

The others had got into one of the droschkes that waited in 
line beside the building. The dark stranger put an impatient 
head out of the window. The two behind quickened their steps ; 
the young man helped Louise in, mounted himself, and slammed 
the door. 

The driver gathered up the reins, cracked his whip, and the 
big-bodied droschke went swerving round the corner, clattering 
gutturally on the cobbled stone pavement. 

The group of loiterers at the door dispersed. 


THE END 


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